€lar& 
ffiectureg 
1913 


Clarft 
Sl^emoriai  Secturcg 
1013 

THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION 
OF  TO-DAT 

BY 

JAMES  T.  SHOTWELL,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  HISTORY  AT  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 

AND  WILLIAM  BREWSTER  CLARK  LECTURER 

AT  AMHERST  COLLEGE  FOR  1913 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


1913 


/  7 


COPYRIGHT,   1913,  BY  JAMES  T.   SHOTWELL 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  October  iQig 


TO 

M.  S. 


FOBEWOBD 

THB^  unique  characteristic  of  modern  times 
—  one  which  gives  every  indication  of  being 
permanent  —  is  that  the  world,  both  personal 
and  external,  is  to  an  apparently  increasing 
degree  in  a  state  of  change.  The  immense 
significance  of  this  fact  is  as  yet  but  dimly 
perceived.  The  new  modifies  the  old  or  dis- 
places it  in  every  department  of  life  without 
exception  and  with  increasing  rapidity.  New 
ideas,  new  movements,  new  ways  of  looking 
at  things  present  themselves  for  attention  for 
the  first  time  or  call  upon  people  to  change 
their  attitude  towards  things  they  had  con- 
sidered settled.  JThis_  state  of  the  world  ren- 
ders the  practical  problems  of  personal  con- 
duct and  social  policy  increasingly  vital  and 
complex,  and  makes  the  task  of  a  college  in 
its  relation  to  them  as  much  more  difficult  as 
an  institution  is  less  mobile  than  an  indi- 
vidual. 

To  assist  Amherst  College,  therefore,  in 
throwing  light  in  a  genuinely  scientific  spirit 
upon  the  relation  of  the  research,  discovery, 


viii  FOREWORD 

and  thought  of  the  day  to  individual  attitude 
and  social  policy  is  our  aim  in  the  founda- 
tion of  these  lectures.  Such  light  may  come 
through  a  recent  discovery  in  natural  or  ap- 
plied science,  through  a  new  tendency  in  art, 
literature,  or  music;  it  may  be  the  result  of 
some  painstaking  research  in  history  or  an- 
thropology ;  or  it  may  be  found  in  some  vital 
movement,  religious,  philosophic,  economic,  or 
political.  It  is  our  wish  that  men  and  women 
who  are  in  the  position  of  leaders  in  such 
phases  of  the  life  of  the  day  shall  give  to 
Amherst  College  and  the  world  an  exposition 
of  their  particular  work  in  its  relation  to  what 
they  conceive  to  be  a  modern  outlook. 

We  give  these  lectures  in  memory  of  Wil- 
liam Brewster  Clark,  M.D.,  who  graduated 
from  Amherst  in  the  class  of  1876.  We  be- 
lieve that  no  place  for  a  memorial  to  him 
could  be  more  fitting  than  the  college  which 
he  loved  with  a  devotion  characteristically 
rich  and  sincere,  nor  any  form  more  suitable 
than  lectures  on  subjects  which  to  him  would 
be  most  absorbing. 

FANNY  H.  CLAEK, 
W.  EVANS  CLARK. 

NEW  YORK  CITY,  11  March,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

I.   CONTRASTS 1 

II.   DEVOLUTION  OB  EVOLUTION? 41 

III.  THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA     ....    82 

IV.  THE  NEW  REGIME  .  121 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION 
OF  TO-DAY 

I 

CONTRASTS 

WE  are  in  the  midst  of  a  religious  revolu- 
tion !  The  "  old  regime "  of  immemorial  be- 
lief and  custom  is  vanishing  before  our  eyes. 
Faiths  so  old  that  they  come  to  us  from  the 
prehistoric  world  are  yielding  to  the  discov- 
eries of  yesterday.  Institutions  that  have  em- 
bodied these  faiths  and  held  the  allegiance 
of  the  civilized  world  are  now  crumbling  to 
pieces  or  transforming  themselves  wherever 
the  new  forces  of  the  revolution  touch  and 
penetrate.  The  brand  of  superstition  is  be- 
ing placed  upon  many  of  the  most  cherished 
beliefs  of  our  fathers.  The  authority  of  our 
venerable  orthodoxies,  seemingly  so  securely 
centered  in  inspiration,  and  once  so  emphati- 
cally asserted  in  creeds,  is  now  assailed  from 
within  and  without.  We  are  reconstructing 


•2       RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

the  ancient  realm  in  which  they  ruled.  Reason 
and  science,  which  are  our  ideals,  however 
irrational  and  unscientific  we  are,  are  chang- 
ing the  frontiers  of  thought.  We  find  in  them 
rather  than  in  the  acceptance  of  orthodox 
dogma,  the  clue  to  what  gives  direction  to 
our  society  to-day,  —  invention,  politics,  mod- 
ern art  and  literature,  the  concentration  of 
our  energies  upon  the  conquest  of  the  ma- 
terial world,  psychology  at  work  upon  the 
laws  of  behavior  instead  of  an  adjunct  to 
theology,  biology  with  its  suggestions  of  a 
mechanistic  universe,  philosophy  turning  from 
scholasticism  of  various  forms  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  science,  and  the  new  realization  of 
the  economic  basis  of  most  social  movements, 
even  of  most  morality.  All  these  complex  phe- 
nomena of  the  outlook  of  to-day  are  acqui- 
sitions of  the  secular  spirit.  They  may  have 
religion  in  them ;  but  it  is  not  the  old  religion. 
Indeed,  where  in  their  midst  the  old  religion 
still  resides,  it  generally  stands  out  by  its  con- 
trast ;  and  its  field  is  narrowing  steadily.  Their 
growth  overshadows  it  on  many  sides,  cutting 
off  superstitions  and  transforming  theologies ; 
and  they  are  managing  their  own  affairs  with- 
out its  interference. 


CONTRASTS  3 

The  revolution  is  as  sudden  as  it  is  vast.  I 
myself  have  lived  in  the  two  regimes.  I  am 
tolerably  sure,  moreover,  that  some  before 
me  now  are  living  in  one,  some  in  the  other. 
To  be  sure,  like  all  great  movements  it  was 
long  in  preparation,  and  much  was  done  be- 
fore the  world  awakened  to  it.  But  now  the 
alarm  of  the  old  and  the  triumph  of  the  new 
are  obvious  to  any  one  who  looks  at  either 
side.  I  cannot  find  in  any  church  where  there 
is  a  congregation  of  average  intelligence  the 
preacher  who  will  deliver  the  sermons  of  my 
boyhood.  As  for  the  sermons  that  deal  with  the 
disturbed  and  disappearing  faiths,  and  reinter- 
pret the  old  dogmas  to  mean  something  new, 
—  I  can  hardly  escape  them,  if  I  go  to  church 
at  all.  It  is  only,  however,  when  one  recalls 
that  the  sermons  of  his  boyhood  were  those  of 
all  the  ages,  that  one  realizes  what  the  revolu- 
tion means.  For  from  Augustine  to  Timothy 
D  wight  the  fundamentals  of  religion  remained 
practically  unchanged.  Now  D  wight  is  classed, 
along  with  Cotton  Mather,  as  a  historical  cu- 
riosity, a  specimen  in  the  museum  of  thought, 
and  only  the  prodigious  grasp  of  Augustine's 
philosophy  and  his  historic  importance  in  the 
building-up  of  the  Christian  doctrine  secure 


4      RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

for  him  a  place  in  our  curricula.    A  new  era 
has  dawned  in  the  history  of  human  thought. 

Let  me  interrupt  myself  here  to  say  that  I 
am  not  here  to  preach  the  revolution !  I  am 
merely  attempting  to  state  it.  The  historian, 
as  Polybius  so  emphatically  asserted,  must  be 
no  partisan.  "  Directly  a  man  assumes  the 
moral  attitude  of  a  historian,  he  ought  to  for- 
get all  considerations  such  as  love  of  one's 
friends,  hatred  of  one's  enemies.  .  .  .  He  must 
sometimes  praise  enemies  and  blame  friends. 
For  as  a  living  creature  is  rendered  useless  if 
deprived  of  its  eyes,  so  if  you  take  truth  from 
history,  what  is  left  but  an  idle  and  unprofit- 
able tale."  1  This  is  the  simple  ideal  of  scien- 
tific history,  but  from  Polybius  to  Macaulay 
the  bias  in  even  the  master  historians  has 
shown  how  difficult  this  simple  ideal  really  is. 
It  is  not  so  very  hard,  perhaps,  to  recognize 
the  good  in  one's  enemies,  and  certainly  not 
to  stop  battling  for  one's  friends.  But  the 
difficulty  is  to  divest  one's  self  of  prejudices, 
whose  very  existence  we  scarcely  suspect.  This 
is  what  makes  the  study  of  religion  so  treach- 
erous. Here  even  the  clearest  eye  is  likely  to 

1  Book  i,  chap.  14. 


CONTRASTS  5 

trace  the  perspectives  through  the  warping 
glass  of  prejudice.  Indeed,  some  distortion  is 
inevitable,  for  the  glass  is  before  the  eye  of 
us  all.  Let  me  ask  you  frankly  to  put  the 
question  to  yourselves  whether,  even  the  few 
statements  I  have  already  made,  have  not  al- 
ready aroused  your  prejudices !  The  very  as- 
sertion that  there  is  a  religious  revolution 
seems  to  most  of  us  like  an  invitation  to  take 
sides.  Some  of  you  are,  I  am  perfectly  sure, 
already  framing  arguments  against  the  sweep- 
ing generalization  with  which  I  began;  some 
of  you  are  giving  it  a  mental  nod  of  approval. 
Each  side  sees  that  the  attitude  of  the  other 
is  unscientific ;  but  it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize 
that  both  are  equally  so.  Now  unless  we  over- 
come this  innate  tendency,  —  you  as  well  as  I, 

—  we  may  as  well  not  take  up  the  problems 
before  us  at  all.  For  we  shall  have  them  all 
solved  before  we  touch  them.  We  must  learn 
not  to  care  for  whatever  has  meant  most  to  us, 

—  excepting  only  the  truth ;  and  we  shall  find 
truth  only  upon  that  wide-open  but  almost  un- 
traveled  road  which  leads  away  from  ourselves. 

With  this  caution  in  mind  let  us  return  to 
our  problem,  which  is  not  to  prove  the  exist- 


6      RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

ence  of  a  religious  revolution, —  for  that  is 
admitted  by  all  who  give  the  situation  any 
thought,  and  is  the  starting-point  for  almost 
every  treatment  of  the  place  of  religion  in 
modern  life,  —  but  to  measure  its  importance 
and  see  its  setting  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
Y  It  is  not  a  problem  in  theology  but  in  the  so- 
cial sciences;  in  anthropology,  psychology, 
sociology  and  history.  We  are  not  concerned 
with  whether  things  ought  to  be  so  or  not,  but 
with  what  they  are  and  have  been.  The  truth 
or  falseness  of  this  or  that  doctrine  lies  out- 
side the  story  of  its  role  in  human  history,  and 
we  are  dealing  with  our  problem  from  the 
human  side.  We  see  religion  shifting  its  place 
/in  society  and  wish  to  learn  how  deep  the 
change  has  gone,  how  lasting  it  is  likely  to  prove 
and  what  is  its  setting  in  the  evolution  of  civili- 
zation. This  involves  a  consideration  of  belief, 
too,  but  only  as  a  social  phenomenon,  embody- 
ing changing  attitudes.  Religion  is  so  much  a 
thing  of  belief  that  it  is  impossible  to  go  be- 
neath the  surface  of  its  institutions  without 
entering  to  some  degree  into  its  myths  or  the- 
ologies. But  just  as  one  can  treat  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  upon  Ameri- 
can history,  discover  its  origins  historically  and 


CONTRASTS  7 

interpret  in  its  light  the  spirit  of  American  di- 
plomacy, without  settling  the  question  of  its 
justice,  so  one  can  pass  in  review  the  chang- 
ing field  of  religious  belief,  and  in  a  purely 
historical  survey,  watch  the  movement  of  revo- 
lutionary disturbance  which  dominates  there 
now.  The  problem  is  historical  in  the  truest 
sense;  as  genuinely  historical  as  the  decline  of 
the  Roman  Empire  or  the  rise  of  democracy. 
To  be  sure  history  has  seldom  been  realized  in 
so  wide  a  synthesis,  involving  every  one  of  the 
social  sciences,  and  there  are  those  who  object 
to  setting  such  tasks  for  a  mere  muse  like  Clio. 
But  history  is  no  longer  a  tale  for  the  credu- 
lous ;  it  is  the  cooperative  record  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  our  civilization,  and  it  must  cover  the 
data  of  every  phase  to  learn  the  real  signifi- 
cance of  any. 

What  follows,  then,  is  a  survey  of  such  facts, 
or  rather  a  summary  of  them,  since  the  evi- 
dence is  too  vast  to  be  presented  in  any  one 
series  of  lectures,  however  long.  It  already  fills 
libraries,  and  is  only  begun.  Much  of  it  deals 
with  the  unhistoric  and  the  uncivilized.  For, 
as  biology  seeks  light  upon  the  nature  of  life 
in  a  study  of  the  lower  organisms,  and  psychol- 
ogy is(  watching  the  twitches  of  protoplasm 


8      RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

through  microscopes  to  learn  the  meaning  of 
our  own  behavior,  so  anthropology  has  found 
in  primitive  societies  a  key  to  the  meaning  of  the 
culture  of  the  civilized  and  sociology  is  apply- 
ing the  key.  The  result  has  been  a  new  under- 
standing, not  simply  of  the  present,  but  of  all 
history.  The  story  of  the  evolution  of  society 
is  now  being  worked  out  by  a  great  coopera- 
tive effort  of  scientists,  some  in  the  heart  of 
Africa  or  Australia,  others  digging  in  the  hills 
of  Crete,  others  again  testing  the  texts  of  the 
Bible  against  the  background  of  Asian  pagan- 
ism, gathering  the  evidence  of  folk-lore  and 
folk-ways  in  secluded  villages,  or  watching, 
through  the  mass  of  accumulated  evidence  in 
our  libraries,  law  emerge  from  priestcraft  and 
reason  from  the  trammels  of  mythology. 

We  turn,  then,  to  this  composite  survey  for 
light  upon  the  present  situation,  to  see  if  it 
can  clarify  the  outlook  or  explain  the  meaning 
of  the  change  which  is  taking  place  to-day,  a 
change  so  fundamental  that  it  seems  to  imply 
the  overturn  of  the  whole  trend  of  past  phi- 
losophy and  the  destruction  of  institutions  as 
old  as  all  civilization.  But  these  historical  and 
anthropological  sciences,  when  interrogated 
upon  so  vital  a  matter  as  the  place  of  religion 


CONTRASTS  9 

in  society,  instead  of  offering  at  once  a  cleared 
perspective,  in  which  the  changing  present 
takes  its  place  definitely  and  shows  its  signifi- 
cance by  contrast  with  the  past,  reveal  a  view 
of  religious  history  which  comes  with  as  star- 
tling surprise  as  the  discovery  of  the  present 
revolution  itself  to  one  who  has  just  learned 
to  see  it.  'For  they  show  that  the  scope  of  re- 
ligion in  society  has  been  declining  all  along 
the  ages,  from  the  primitive  world  to  ours. 
The  religious  revolution  of  to-day,  viewed 
from  the  standpoint  of  all  the  past,  turns  out 
to  be  but  a  swifter  phase  of  an  age-long  move- 
ment,—  and  the  history  of  civilization  itself 
is  a  history  of  secularization.  From  the  world 
of  the  primitive  to  that  of  the  modern,  the 
progress  of  culture  has  gone  side  by  side  with 
a  lessening  of  what  we  now  term  superstition, 
but  was  once  religion,  and  a  steady  growth  of 
purely  secular  control. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  amount  of  re- 
ligion decreases  as  society  advances.  The 
social  sciences  are  not  in  a  position  to  make 
any  statement  upon  that  point.  What  is  lost 
in  extent  may  be  gained  in  intensity.  We  shall 
deal  with  that  later.  But  whether  religion  is 
less  or  more,  its  field  of  action  and  its  author- 


10     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

ity  are  steadily  being  more  and  more  circum- 
scribed. Once  one  has  had  one's  eyes  opened 
to  the  nature  of  primitive  society,  and  so  real- 
izes what  elements  history  started  with,  —  the 
paralyzing  superstitions,  the  dominance  of 
magic,  the  persistent  taboo,  the  luck  or  curse  in 
men  and  things,  —  then  one  begins  to  realize 
that  a  story  of  emancipation  means  at  the  same 
time  a  rejection  of  authority,  —  a  point  one  is 
-  likely  to  forget.  To  the  student  of  social  evo- 
lution who  approaches  his  question  with  fresh 
and  untrammeled  mind,  there  is  no  larger  fact 
in  the  history  of  mankind  than  this  narrowing 
of  the  sphere  of  religion,  and  none  more  re- 
markable than  the  failure  to  recognize  it  until 
anthropology  took  us  outside  ourselves.  For 
now  we  see  that  the  process  of  civilization 
means  that  society  is  assuming  control  of  it- 
self, making  its  own  the  world  it  once  shared 
with  superstition,  facing  undaunted  the  things 
of  its  former  fears,  and  so  carving  out  for  it- 
self, from  the  realm  of  mystery  in  which  it 
lies,  a  sphere  of  unhampered  action  and  a  field 
of  independent  thought. 

The  religious  revolution,  then,  seems  to  have 
come  as  the  last,  swift  phase  of  an  age-long 
movement,  —  at  least  so  the  anthropologist 


CONTRASTS  11 

implies.  If  we  are  to  deal  with  the  one,  we 
must,  therefore,  deal  with  the  other,  and  to 
this  joint  problem  of  history  and  anthropology 
we  must  now  address  ourselves.  ^ 

Now  what  is  the  evidence  for  the  sweeping 
generalizations  before  us  ?  It  lies  first  in  the 
illustration  supplied  by  contrast  between  Eu- 
ropean and  non-European  societies ;  and  sec- 
ondly in  the  difference  of  their  aim  and  trend. 
Compare  our  world  with  the  Orient,  which  has 
really  taken  religion  to  heart,  or  with  primi- 
tive society,  which  has  little  else,  or  look  back 
along  the  path  of  our  own  history,  a  record  > 
saturated  in  superstition,  and  we  can  see  what 
is  meant  by  the  process  of  secularization  as 
the  keynote  of  our  development.  The  farther  ( 
back  we  go  the  more  the  contrast  strikes  us, 
just  as  it  does  the  farther  we  travel  in  the 
world  to-day  from  the  lands  of  European 
culture. 

One  cannot  embody  the  vast  and  complex 
Orient  in  a  single  formula ;  but  in  contrast 
with  the  West  one  thing  stands  clear  —  it  is 
religious.  Its  arrested  civilization  has  suffered 
no  arrest  of  religion.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 


12     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

only  in  the  light  of  the  East  that  we  learn  the 
religious  possibilities  of  mankind.  There  so-\ 
ciety  is  really  dominated  by  belief  and  moulded 
by  taboos.  Philosophy?  literature  and  art  all 
bear  the  stamp  of  religion.  They  lack  that 
bold,  iconoclastic  spirit  which  carries  the  West 
along.  Compared  with  their  elaborate  systems 
of  belief,  ours  are  hardly  more  than  a  few 
general  maxims.  Seldom  with  us  does  faith 
attain  such  visions  of  immortality  as  cut  in 
upon  the  millions  of  India,  and  obscure,  with 
the  ideals  of  the  life  beyond,  the  realities  of 
this.  Souls  in  transmigration  fill  the  entire 
animal  creation  ;  ghosts  find  no  nirvana.  From 
the  lowest  fetish  worshiper  and  half-charlatan 
wizard  to  those  learned  in  the  ancient  philoso- 
phy of  the  Vedas,  the  main  business  of  life  is 
to  escape  the  baleful  miasma  of  ceremonial 
impurity — by  washings  in  sacred  rivers  or  by 
spells  that  bring  good  luck.  Life  there  is  veri- 
tably what  religion  was  once  in  Rome,  the 
\science  of  serving  the  godso  Nowhere  with  us 
has  cult  developed  such  a  wealth  of  ritual,  or 
custom,  rooted  in  taboo,  so  weighed  upon  the 
conduct  of  every  day.  Dogma  and  religious  N 
authority  determine  the  very  structure  of 
Oriental  society.  The  castes  of  India  are  a 


CONTRASTS  13 

product  of  Brahmanism ;  Chinese  conservatism 
and  Japanese  solidarity  are  alike  rooted  in  the 
worship  of  the  dead.  And  these  beliefs  are  as 
vital  to-day  as  the  institutions  they  create  are 
strong.  To  be  sure,  faith  varies  there  as  here, 
but  as  science  has  given  its  tone  to  the  thought 
—  even  the  religion  —  of  the  modern  West, 
so  the  East  as  a  whole  stands  for  religion  and 
admits  its  preeminent  claims.  Now  and  again 
Hindoo  or  Chinese  reformers  have  lightened 
the  burden  of  its  authority  and  emphasized 
the  claims  of  reason  and  simple  morality. 
Such  were  Buddha  and  Confucius.  But  al- 
though there  was  the  promise  of  emancipation 
in  their  ideals,  they  have  won  but  a  limited 
allegiance  and  have  been  for  the  most  part 
lost  or  distorted  in  the  superstitions  they  com- 
bated. They  have  suffered  the  fate  which 
generally  befalls  the  man  who  reforms  from 
within.  The  saint  or  prophet  who  protests  is 
himself,  in  course  of  time,  added  to  that  very 
pantheon  against  which  he  fulminated.  For 
however  the  gods  come  and  go,  their  caravan- 
sary is  always  full.  The  worship  of  ancestors, 
with  its  sacrifices  and  its  magic,  lies  deeper  at 
the  roots  of  patriarchal  China  than  the  reform- 
ing precepts  of  Confucius.  Brahmanism,  which 


14    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

Buddha  would  have  purified,  far  from  dead, 
is  one. of  the  most  vital  forces  in  the  world 
to-day.  We  have  but  little  idea  of  its  continual 
spread  through  the  hills  and  jungles  of  India, 
among  the  non- Aryan  and  casteless  tribes, 
engulfing,  as  Lyall  says,  like  an  ocean,  the 
ever-breaking  shore  of  primitive  beliefs  which 
mark  the  ethnical  frontiers  of  the  Hindoo. 
What  a  spectacle  of  skepticism  we  offer  to 
races  like  these,  where  religion  really  counts. 
If  we  could  see  the  world  in  terms  of  religion, 
we  might  appreciate  what  it  would  mean  to 
have  "foreign  devils"  defile  our  temples,  and 
see  reasons  for  an  Indian  mutiny. 

The  East  has  seen  us  in  the  same  contrasted 
light  as  we  see  it.  We  stand  for  material  and 
rational  triumphs,  and  it  is  this  phase  of  our 
culture  which  it  appropriates.  In  the  meeting 
of  East  and  West,  one  might  think  that  those 
Oriental  nations  which  had  treasured  faith 
and  ritual  so  long  and  so  intensely,  whose 
ideal  rests  so  largely  upon  the  promises  of 
immortality,  would  have  chosen  from  the  gifts 
of  the  West  the  religion  we  offer,  and  ignored 
the  rest.  But  they  ask  for  science  rather  than 
for  Christianity. 

The  significance  of  this  seems  to  escape  us. 


CONTRASTS  15 

It  indicates  the  relative  activity  of  our  own 
religious  and  secular  forces.  It  shows  us 
what  elements  are  mainly  at  work  in  the 
spread  of  European  civilization.  The  onward 
march  of  that  culture  sums  up  for  most  of  us 
what  [we  call  progress,  and  its  conquest,  not 
of  the  Orient  only,  but  of  the  whole  world, 
now  in  mid-career,  forms  the  most  tremendous 
spectacle  in  the  annals  of  mankind.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  heroic  missionaries  on  the  frontier 
lines,  in  spite  of  Te  Deums  for  victories  in 
Arabian  seas,  it  is  a  triumph  of  secularization. 
It  is  sacrilege,  backed  by  the  most  potent 
forces  the  world  has  known,  —  nor  merely  by 
British  fleets  or  German  armies,  but  by  the 
irresistible  might  of  rationalized  industry  and 
modern  science.  Before  these  forces  the 
dreamy  East  is  giving  up  her  dreams;  the 
factory  whistle  is  breaking  in  upon  the  clank- 
ing of  the  pagoda  bells ;  the  muezzin's  call  to 
prayer  yields  to  the  more  imperious  call  to 
work.  Keligion  was  the  heritage  of  the  Ori- 
ent; science  the  achievement  of  the  West; 
and  the  West  is  the  victor.  It,  too,  of  course, 
has  its  religion  to  offer,  but  not  of  a  kind  to 
hinder  industry  and  commerce,  and  not  even 
—  at  present  at  least  —  to  block  rationalism. 


16    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

So  when  the  West  meets  the  East,  the  result, 
so  far  as  one  can  see  it  in  the  aims  of  the 
society  which  their  meeting  engenders,  is  not 
that  there  is  added  more  religion  to  the  wealth 
of  customs  and  beliefs  which  gives  the  tone 
to  those  arrested  civilizations.  It  may  change 
some  of  the  currents  of  those  customs  and  be- 
liefs and  vitalize  some  of  their  possibilities  by 
a  change  of  emphasis  and  a  new  center  for 
their  reverence.  But  these  are  hardly  more 
than  by-products.  The  converts  to  Christi- 
anity are  few  compared  with  the  converts  to 
science.  The  taboos  are  not  merely  changing 
their  sanction,  they  are  breaking  down.  Sci- 
ence through  its  inventions  has  got  might  upon 
its  side  as  well.  It  has  armed  the  revolution 
which  ended  the  Manchu  dynasties  of  China. 
The  new  republic  is  to  be  ruled,  not  through 
an  appeal  to  ancestors,  but  after  the  model  of 
England  and  America,  where  the  power  of  the 
purse  in  the  House  of  Commons  has  secular-: 
ized  for  all  practical  purposes  the  divine  right 
of  kings,  or  where  law  is  created  at  the  direct 
behest  of  business  and  the  constitution  rec- 
ognizes no  taboos.  The  claims  of  reason  as 
against  those  of  tradition  and  authority  are 
stirring  with  portentous  movement  in  the 


CONTRASTS  17 

tranquil,  religious  depths  of  four  hundred  mil- 
lion people.  In  Japan  the  new  era  has  already 
dawned,  and  even  India  is  at  last  showing 
the  signs  of  an  industrial  as  well  as  national 
awakening. 

The  Industrial  Eevolution  has  reached  the 
Orient.  The  political  and  social  history  of  the 
Far  East  at  present  must  be  read  in  the  light 
of  that  underlying  fact.  It  is  the  new  indus- 
trial Japan  which  is  throwing  its  colonies 
across  the  Pacific  and  pushing  into  Asia;  ifc 
was  the  industrial  south  of  China  which  bred 
the  recent  revolution.  Even  in  India  the  new 
national  consciousness  is  bound  up  with  the 
practical  appliances  of  modern  science.  There 
is,  therefore,  something  deeper  before  us 
than  a  mere  political  readjustment.  Beneath 
the  political  there  is  a  social  and  beneath  the 
social  a  religious  readjustment, —  a  breaking- 
up  of  world-old  customs  and  beliefs.  Caste  is 
broken  in  upon  in  India  when  a  common  rail- 
way carriage  is  used  by  all  and  a  city  is  forced 
to  fall  back  upon  a  common  waterworks  sys- 
tem. The  contact  that  defiles  is  now  unavoid- 
able, and  so  it  ceases  to  defile.  Brahmans,  who 
maintained  their  sacred  isolation  for  centuries 
in  the  static  conditions  of  the  past,  are  ac- 


18    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

commodating  themselves  to  the  dynamics  of 
Western  civilization.  When  Chinese  families 
are  torn  apart  for  mills  and  offices  and  scat- 
tered as  ours  have  been,  who  will  tend  the 
ancestors'  tombs?  The  old  loyalty  will  not  at 
once  disappear;  the  Shinto  worship  has  roots 
too  deep  to  be  torn  up  in  a  single  generation. 
But  that  it  is  bound  to  yield  before  the  forces 
of  the  West,  —  the  scientific  forces  mainly, 
—  no  one  who  has  watched  the  process  of 
recent  Oriental  history  can  doubt  for  a  mo- 
ment. 

The  East,  the  static  East,  is  dissolving  at 
our  touch.   But  it  still  remains  a  monument  of 
what   we   might   have   been,  —  and   indeed 
narrowly  escaped  becoming.    It  furnishes  us  , 
a  contrast  which  helps  us  to  see  what  we  really  { 
have  become. 

Turn  now  to  the  savage  and  compare  his 
world  with  ours.  As  the  East  shows  the  pos- 
sibilities of  religious  culture  which  we  have 
never  attained,  and  which  our  rationalism 
frankly  rejects,  the  savage  shows  what  so- 
ciety is  like  when  well-nigh  devoid  of  that 
rationalism  altogether.  His  science  is  magic, 
his  morals  taboos ;  religion  saturates  his  emo-\ 


CONTRASTS  19 

tions,  dictates  his  etiquette,  governs  behavio^ 
and  thought,  and  determines  his  society.  It  is 
the  same  the  world  over,  with  merely  local  va- 
riations. Not  only  are  there  no  savage  people 
known  to  us  who  are  without  religion,  but  the 
more  they  are  investigated  the  more  their  cus- 
toms and  institutions  appear  rooted  in  it.  It 
begins  with  the  processes  of  generation  and 
presides  over  birth ;  under  its  auspices  the 
child  acquires  manhood,  and  from  it  he  learns 
his  duties  to  society ;  life  is  passed  amid  its 
prescriptions ;  it  can  be  faced  only  with  its 
own  inventions,  for  its  sanction  is  death. 
Death  is  not  a  natural,  but  a  supernatural 
event,  as  it  still  seems  to  be  with  most  of  us. 
Irresistible,  omnipotent,  armed  with  the  des- 
tiny of  men,  religion  —  including  magic  — 
alone  can  supply  the  "  medicines  "  for  the  evils 
it  brings.  It  h*lds  the  secret  of  pain,  —  in 
crystals,  in  malignant  bones,  in  passings  of  the 
hand  that  has  held  things  sacred  or  accursed, 
in  stars,  in  voices  of  the  wind.  It  literally  runs 
in  the  blood,  the  sight  of  which  may  transfix 
with  superstitious  terror,  —  the  medium  of  sac- 
rament, the  essential  in  sacrifice  the  world  over. 
Its  omens  direct  affairs  of  state,  through  the 
hooting  of  an  owl  or  the  howl  of  a  wolf,  or 


20    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

the  stumbling  of  a  warrior.1  The  most  trivial 
incidents  thus  acquire  tremendous  importance, 
and  furnish  a  clue  to  the  future  and  a  guide 
for  the  present.  One  must  observe  the  minut- 
est regulations  or  suffer  the  results  in  droughts 
or  storms  or  plagues  or  accidents. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  insist  upon  this  all- 
embracing  role  of  religion  in  primitive  life. 
Books  on  anthropology  are  full  of  it,  and  of 
little  else.  'Religion  is  the  background  against 
which  rise  the  outlines  of  society.-  It  is  the 
first  science,  philosophy  and  art  of  mankind. 
Abundant  illustration  of  this  is  at  hand  for 
all  who  care  to  find  it.  In  the  light  of  such  a 
contrast  our  Christian  civilization  shows  its 
religious  limitations. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  savage  has  more 
religion  than  the  Christian.  That  is  not  the 
question ;  but  in  any  case  he  has  more  in  rela- 
tion to  other  things.  It  more  largely  fills  his 
life.  But  then  again  that  does  not  mean  that 
his  life  is  full. 

The  actions  and  outlook  of  the  savage  may 

1  Stubbing  one's  toe  on  the  warpath  means  defeat.  William 
the  Conqueror  is  said  to  have  fallen  on  the  beach  at  Pevensey, 
but  he  rose,  like  a  good  rationalist,  with  a  handful  of  sand, 
to  show  that  he  had  done  it  on  purpose. 


CONTRASTS  21 

be  dominated  by  religion  -without  his  being 
eternally  lost  in  a  religious  atmosphere,  like 
an  Indian  Yogi  or  a  mediaeval  monk.  He  is 
not  generally  bothered  about  atmospheres  at 
all.  So  long  as  life  runs  along  normally  he  is 
the  most  unreligious  animal  in  human  form. 
A  savage  does  not  spend  his  life  in  constant 
terror  of  his  lurking  demons,  chattering  his 
magic  spells  at  every  opportunity ;  nor  is  he 
eternally  conscious  of  the  taboos  which  thwart 
him  in  chase  or  war.  He  does  not  meditate 
upon  these  things  as  we  might,  simply  because 
he  is  not  much  given  to  meditating  upon 
anything.  It  would  be  wrong  to  say  that  he 
does  not  meditate  at  all,  but  he  has  not  ac- 
quired the  habit  of  self-examination  to  the 
same  extent  as  we  have.  To  be  sure  the  sav- 
age is  not  the  simple-minded  creature  anthro- 
pologists used  to  make  him  out  to  be,  and  we 
are  finding  more  puzzling  depths  in  him  the 
more  we  acquire  the  possibility  of  viewing  the 
world  in  his  way.  But  after  all,  his  thought 
is  not  so  persistent,  so  voluntary,  so  capable  / 
of  direction  as  ours,  for  in  this  discipline  of 
the  mind  lies  about  the  only  difference  we  can 
see  between  ourselves  and  him.  So,  although 
capable  of  much  control  where  we  often  lack 


22    KELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

it,  his  mind  seems  to  keep  no  active  concentra- 
tion on  these  religious  phenomena  which  form 
his  world.  Thought,  like  emotion,  is  with  him 
mostly  a  response  to  some  stimulus  from  with- 
out —  and  to  maintain  its  attitude  effectively 
only  when  the  stimulus  still  is  active.  It  is 
something  like  a  lingering  echo  in  the  cells 
of  the  brain  of  a  call  from  without,  that  thrills 
and  dies,  or  like  the  confused  register  of  waves 
of  light  and  color,  as  the  light  changes  and 
the  colors  fade.  Thought,  therefore,  in  gen- 
eral, shares  at  first  both  the  direction  and  the 
attitudes  of  emotion.  Primitive  thinking  is  in- 
termittent and  mostly  involuntary,  as  is,  after 
all,  mostly  the  case  with  us,  too.  There  is 
much  of  our  own  time  when  we  can  hardly  be 
said  to  think ;  instinct  and  habit  are  more  im- 
portant still  than  reason.  Their  somnorific  in- 
fluences continue  to  make  life  possible  and 
enjoyable  even,  as  reason  grows  more  con- 
scious and  science  more  sure  of  the  insignifi- 
cance of  its  role  in  the  grim  tragedy  of  the 
universe.  So  with  the  savage;  instinct  and 
habit  render  his  world  of  potential  terrors 
much  more  comfortable  than  we  might  think. 
His  thought  is  caught  where  attention  draws 
it,  mainly  through  events  of  surprise  or  danger, 


M  CONTRASTS  23 

or  crises,  and  if  fixed  at  all,  fixed  through  the 
continuity  of  joint  stimulation  upon  things  of 
importance  to  himself  or  the  tribe.  It  is  only 
in  such  circumstances  that  savages  attain  any 
acute,  or  perhaps  even  any  measurable, "a ware- 
ness"  of  themselves  or  their  environment.  To 
be  sure  such  strains  of  attention  may  spill 
over,  as  it  were,  into  the  more  normal  run  of 
daily  life,  and  the  spilt  product  may  persist 
in  habit  long  after  the  original  attention  or 
stimulus  has  passed  away.  But  it  is  the  strain 
on  the  nerves  which  first  tingles  with  the  ac- 
tivity of  thought. 

For  the  sake  of  clarity  we  have  spoken  of 
this  awakening  of  thought  as  if  it  were  the 
product  of  individual  brains.  But  it  is  by  way 
of  the  group,  the  horde,  or  tribe  that  the  in- 
dividual first  acquires  consciousness.  Thought 
is  too  intimately  associated  with  expression  to 
flourish  by  itself,  unexpressed,  in  the  dark  re- 
cesses of  a  primitive  brain.  There  its  images 
apparently  lack  the  continuity  and  variety 
which  mutual  exchange  and  comparison  en- 
able them  to  acquire.  Thought  is  a  thing  of 
the  camp-fire,  of  gesture  and  speech.  It  needs 
more  than  the  stimulation  to  attention  to  a 
single  passing  experience;  it  must  be  ap- 


24    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  ^TO-DAY 

preached  from  more  than  one  angle  in  order 
to  disentangle  it  from  the  confusion  of  mo- 
mentary impressions  of  reality.  The  expe- 
rience may  have  to  be  repeated  and  worked 
over  until  its  significance  is  borne  home,  — 
and  in  some  of  the  largest  facts  of  life  that 
cannot  be  done  by  the  individual,  since  he  dies 
in  the  experiment.  In  any  case,  conscious- 
Xv  ness  develops  first  in  and  through  the  group. 
It  is  from  such  experiences  in  which  he  shares 
that  the  individual  learns  to  appropriate  for 
himself  lessons  of  conduct  from  the  common 
store  and  so  through  the  confusion  of  his  own 
reactions  to  gain  a  personal  basis  for  inde- 
pendent judgment  or  thought.  To  be  sure, 
before  he  has  done  this,  it  is  a  little  prema- 
ture to  talk  of  thought  at  all ;  for  the  best  the 
group  can  do  is  to  socialize  its  emotions  and 
learn  how  to  meet  the  situations  in  which 
they  arise. 

Now  it  is  just  these  objects  of  group  emo- 
tional apprehension,  which  are  the  objects  of 
primitive  religion.  The  more  attention  is  con- 
centrated upon  anything,  the  greater  emo- 
tional disturbance  it  awakens,  and  the  more 
it  calls  for  adjustment.  In  this  emotional 
strain  and  sensing  of  things  lies  the  core  of 


CONTRASTS  25 

religion.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
thought  and  religion,  rooted  alike  in  emotion, 
are  at  least  complementary,  if  not,  indeed,  co- 
terminous in  the  earliest  outlook  of  humanity. 
To  many  this  seems  mere  guesswork.  No 
one  has  assisted  at  such  dim  beginnings  and 
brought  us  any  account  of  them.  Compara- 
tive psychology  is  still  in  its  infancy ;  anthro- 
pology has  never  found  a  primitive  man ;  it 
deals  with  societies  of  long  and  important  cul- 
ture even  in  the  lowest  savages  it  finds.  Yet 
all  the  evidence  we  have  points  in  one  direc- 
tion. The  further  we  penetrate,  the  less  we 
find  of  savage  society  which  lacks  the  imprint 
of  religion.  And  it  is  particularly  those  things 
which  are  of  vital  concern  to  the  tribe,  upon 
which,  therefore,  its  attention  must  have  been 
especially  concentrated,  which  perpetuate  in 
greatest  degree  that  elemental  religious  stamp. 
Birth  and  death,  —  of  prime  importance,  not 
to  the  individual,  who  is  unconscious  of  their 
operation,  but  to  the  tribe  or  family  whose 
existence  is  affected  by  them,  —  adolescence, 
by  which  the  tribe  gains  a  warrior  or  a  poten- 
tial parent,  marriage  which  holds  the  relations 
of  the  groups  in  permanence,  or  crises  of  less 
normal  occurrence,  such  as  war  and  the  chase 


26    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

—  these  are  phenomena  which  universally  and 
without  question  develop  the  situations  which 
bear  the  stamp  of  the  taboo.1  It  may  be  only 
the  stamp,  for  the  process  of  secularization  is 
as  old  as  progress.  But  luckily  for  the  scien- 
tist, although  unfortunately  for  his  savage  pre- 
decessors, the  stamp  is  nigh  ineradicable.  Fixed 
in  the  habits  and  perpetuated  by  unconscious 
repetition  long  after  their  origins  are  lost  to 
mind,  such  imprints  of  prehistoric  religious 
emotions  lie  thick  on  every  institution  which 
reaches  back  to  primitive  society.  And  so,  al- 
though we  can  never  find  the  really  primi- 
tive society  itself,  we  have  in  institutions  and 
customs,  and  in  that  earliest  embodiment  of 
human  outlook  into  this  strange  world,  my- 
thology, evidences  of  things  immeasurably 

older  than  even  their  own  origins. 
*/ 

In  contrast  with  savage  society,  ours,  out- 
wardly at  least,  is  frankly  profane.  More- 
over, here,  as  in  the  Orient,  the  touch  of  the 
West  means  secularization.  The  spectacle  of 
the  white  man  raising  good  crops  without  reli- 

1  There  are  many  other  bases  for  taboo,  naturally.  We 
are  following  merely  a  relatively  simplified  line  of  thought 
in  order  not  to  lose  sight  of  the  problem  before  us  in  a 
mass  of  details. 


CONTRASTS  27 

gious  ceremonies,  which  disturbed  the  foun- 
dations of  the  Pueblo  Indians'  moral  universe, 
is  the  kind  of  thing  that  destroys  religion 
most  effectively;  and  the  white  man  cannot 
move  without  violating  such  taboos.  Natives 
themselves  soon  become  his  ally.  Those  in 
touch  with  whites  are  burning  to  assert  the 
superiority  which  this  gives  them  and  hence 
pooh-hoo  their  former  ceremonies — not  per- 
haps without  some  secret  qualms.  Physicians, 
traders,  and  missionaries  are  at  one  here.  Be- 
fore them  the  fetishes  disappear  and  the  gods 
die.  The  process  has  never  been  better  de- 
scribed than  by  that  Zulu  quoted  by  Bishop 
Galloway.  Once  Unkulunkulu  was  a  very 
great  god  of  the  Zulus.  The  white  man  set- 
tled on  the  veldt  broke  his  laws,  violated  his 
sacred  rituals,  and  now  (says  the  Zulu)  his 
name  "  is  like  the  name  of  a  very  old  crone, 
which  has  not  the  power  to  do  even  a  little 
thing  for  herself,  but  sits  continually  where 
she  sat  in  the  morning  till  the  sun  sets.  And 
the  children  make  sport  of  her,  for  she  can- 
not catch  and  flog  them,  but  only  talk  with 
her  mouth.  Just  so  is  the  name  of  Unkulun- 
kulu."1 The  frailty  of  what  was  once  omnip 

1  Cf.  Tylor,  Primitive   Culture,  n,  285.    The  incident  is 
frequently  quoted. 


28    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

otent  has  never  been  better  phrased.  Such 
gods  are  passing  everywhere ;  how  many  there 
were  and  what  role  they  played  it  will  never 
be  possible  to  say;  for  the  stern  march  of 
progress  obliterates  even  their  monuments. 

The  history  of  antiquity  offers  us  the  same 
contrasts,  if  v/e  care  to  see  them.  But  if  we 
care  to  see  them  we  must  come  upon  them 
from  the  other  side — the  primitive  side;  take 
account  of  the  history  before  them  rather  than 
the  history  since.  Afterwards,  history  arranges 
its  canvas  to  suit  what  has  since  occurred. 
The  texts  of  Christianity,  for  example,  furnish 
but  a  slight  idea  of  the  intensity  of  the  reli- 
gious activity  concentrated  in  the  Egyptian  or 
Oriental  mysteries  which  it  overcame.  Who  of 
us  can  appreciate  antique  paganism?  The  gods 
of  Greece  or  Rome  are  for  us  hardly  more 
than  the  mutilated  statues  of  them  in  our 
museums,  —  pitiable,  helpless  objects  before 
the  scrutiny  and  comments  of  a  passing  crowd. 
Venus  is  an  armless  figure  from  the  Louvre ; 
Dionysos  does  not  mean  to  us  divine  posses- 
sion, the  gift  of  tongues,  or  immortality ;  Attis 
brings  no  salvation.  But  to  antiquity  the 
"  pagan  "  cults  were  no  mockery.  They  were 


CONTRASTS  29 

as  real  as  Polynesian  heathenism  or  Christian- 
ity to-day.  That  is  something  we  can  never 
quite  realize,  who  have  dwelt  aloof  with  the 
poets  and  philosophers  of  antiquity  or  who  see 
it  athwart  the  Christian  sources,  in  which  the 
religion  of  the  Jews  stands  out  as  the  one 
genuine  religion.  "Paganism"  was  just  as 
genuine  as  Judaism.  It  was  a  parallel  devel- 
opment out  of  the  same  primal  stuff,  — 
or  rather  there  were  parallel  developments, 
for  there  were  all  sorts  of  paganisms.  Perhaps 
our  perspective  will  never  be  clear  so  long  as 
we  talk  of  paganism  at  all.  Viewed  scientifi- 
cally there  was  no  such  thing.  There  were 
merely  a  number  of  religions,  of  which  the 
Jewish  was  one.  The  distinction  is  dogmatic, 
not  one  of  essence.  The  non-Jewish,  non-Chris- 
tian cults  were  as  various  in  kind  as  in  vital- 
ity. As  religions  always  do,  they  fitted  them- 
selves to  their  own  societies,  or  rather  the 
societies  fitted  them  to  themselves.  Nor  did 
the  pagan  cults  die  out  suddenly,  as  many  of  our 
histories  imply,  like  sickly,  moribund  things. 
They  have  lived  on  in  our  enlightened  Europe 
to  an  extent  perhaps  equal  to  the  Jewish  be- 
liefs which  furnish  the  externals  of  orthodoxy. 
Here  and  there,  within  the  Church  and  with- 


30    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

out  it,  in  cults  and  folk-lore,  in  proverbs  and 
taboos,  the  old  religions  still  abide. 

From  the  anthropological  standpoint  all 
antiquity  was  essentially  alike,  a  vast  maga- 
zine of  variant  developments  from  primitive 
stuff.  The  Jews  emerge  into  history,  not  a 
nation  of  keen  spiritual  aspirations  and  altruis- 
tic ethics,  but  that  pagan  people,  worshiping 
rocks,  sheep  and  cattle,  and  spirits  of  caves 
and  wells,  of  whom  the  Old  Testament,  tend- 
ing towards  its  higher  ideal,  gives  fragmen- 
tary but  convincing  evidence.  The  Romans, 
like  the  Jews,  enter  history  with  a  vast  supply 
of  gods  and  demons.  There  were  mysterious 
presences  wherever  one  turned,  —  numina, 
vaguely  personal  but  multitudinous.  Later, 
the  pontiffs  gave  them  names  and  preserved, 
with  some  priestly  elaboration,  the  lists  of 
these  uncanny  sprites  of  the  daily  life.  There 
were  Abeona  who  protected  the  children  when 
they  first  left  the  house,  Domiduca  who  or- 
dinarily brought  them  back,  Interduca  who 
guarded  them  on  the  way,  Cunina  who  pro- 
tected the  child  in  the  cradle  while  Cuba  gave 
it  sleep,  Educa  who  taught  it  to  eat,  Fabulinus 
who  taught  it  to  speak,  Statanus  or  Statina 
who  taught  it  to  stand,  Levana  who  lifted  it 


CONTRASTS  31 

up  from  the  ground,  etc.  The  husbandman 
had  Imporcitor  to  help  him  plow  his  furrows, 
Insitor  to  sow  the  seeds,  which  themselves 
had  Seia  while  underground,  Segetea  when 
showing  above  it,  Nodutus  when  the  stalk  was 
heading,  Lacturnus  when  the  kernel  got  milky. 
Messia  and  Messor  helped  to  cut  the  grain, 
Convector  and  Conditor  to  bring  it  home  and 
^  C  mow  it  away,  and  Tutilina  protected  the  barns 
where  it  was  stored.  From  these  priestly  for- 
mulations one  can  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  in- 
tense religious  life  of  those  peasant  peoples 
whose  sacred  fires  were  burning  on  the  Etrus- 
can and  Campagnian  hills  centuries  before  the 
myth  of  Romulus  had  even  been  imagined. 
The  old  indigenous  gods  passed  away  as  cir- 
cumstances changed;  but,  as  in  India,  the 
pantheon  was  always  full. 

Religion  in  Rome  was  not  a  thing  of  poetic 
myth,  nor  simply  a  mirror  of  the  beauty  or 
mystery  of  nature.  It  was  eminently  practical, 
and  therefore  eminently  effective  in  both  home 
and  state.  As  the  word  religio  itself  came  to 
suggest,1  it  was  the  expression  of  a  moral  tie, 

1  Fowler  holds  that  it  meant  originally  "  the  natural  feel- 
ing of  man  in  the  presence  of  the  supernatural,"  and  that 
the  later  meaning,  "  the  feeling  which  suggests  worship  and 


32    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

of  duty  and  social  obligation,  from  which,  as 
from  its  own  auguries,  one  might  foretell  the 
political  bent  of  its  people.  But  politics  and 
religion  were  one.  The  city-state  itself,  that 
cell  of  the  structure  of  antique  society,  was  a 
product  of  their  fusion.  The  king  was  a  pon- 
tiff as  well  as  a  war-lord ;  the  magistrate  had 
his  duties  first  toward  the  gods  and  then 
toward  the  people ;  law  was  sacred  formula, 
patriotism  was  piety,  and  exile  excommunica- 
tion. The  city  walls  were  sacred  limits  for  the 
gods,  the  city  itself  a  sort  of  precinct  of  the 
temple  which  crowned  the  citadel.  The  shed- 
ding of  blood  within  the  city  was  sacrilege 
rather  than  crime ;  taboos  of  blood  and  death 
which  rest  upon  all  primitive  warriors  pre- 
vented its  armies  from  entering  its  gates.  The 
sacred  hearth,  whose  little  flame  was  the  one 
thing  that  lived  from  forgotten  centuries,  was 
the  feeble  symbol  of  the  immortality  of  social 

the  forms  under  which  we  perform  that  worship,"  was  due 
to  the  need  on  the  part  of  men  like  Lucretius  and  Cicero  of 
a  word  which  had  not  yet  been  appropriated  as  a  technical 
term  to  express  this  idea.  Cf.  Roman  Religious  Experience, 
pp.  459,  460.  As  was  suggested  above,  primitive  peoples  are 
not  aware  of  religion  in  the  widest  sense,  but  only  of  its  most 
striking  aspects.  This,  however,  does  not  imply  that  their 
religion  is  as  restricted  as  their  view  of  it.  Most  of  primitive 
religion  is  dominated  by  action  rather  than  by  belief. 


CONTRASTS  33 

life.  Time  was  measured  in  terms  of  holy  days 
and  their  corresponding  taboos  and  sacrifices, 
the  round  of  whose  observance  marks  the  be- 
ginning of  our  calendar.  "  Sacra/'  which  were 
once  like  the  secrets  of  savage  medicine  men, 
remained  to  within  historic  times  the  sign  and 
prerogative  of  patricians.  Citizenship  was  it- 
self religious.  Even  to  the  close  of  the  repub- 
lic, the  magistrates  were  formally  chosen  by 
the  gods  through  the  auguries  as  well  as  by 
men ;  and  a  crash  of  thunder,  as  a  sign  from 
Jove,  obliged  the  assemblies  to  adjourn  until 
the  next  day.  In  the  words  of  Fustel  de  Cou- 
langes,  "Law,  government,  and  religion  in  Rome 
were  three  confused  aspects  of  one  thing." 

The  events  of  ancient  history  become  intel- 
ligible only  against  this  background.  The  will 
of  "  the  gods  "  was  the  key  to  policies  of  state, 
and  the  first  business  of  the  magistracy  was 
to  find  it  out.  The  way  a  sacred  chicken  got 
a  grain  stuck  in  its  throat  would  determine 
war  or  peace.  Reforms  voted  through  the  as- 
sembly might  be  vetoed  by  a  flash  of  light- 
ning —  visible  to  a  reactionary  magistrate. 
Campaigns  were  fought  under  the  same  un- 
certain leadership.  Luckily  the  rest  of  the 
world  ran  their  politics  and  made  war  on 


34    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

the  same  grounds.  Hannibal,  marching  un- 
checked upon  Eome  after  the  battle  of  Canna3, 
was  turned  back,  only  at  the  second  milestone 
from  Porta  Capena  on  the  Appian  Way,  by  a 
voice  in  a  dream.  The  Romans  built  upon  the 
spot  a  shrine  to  the  god  Redieulus.  Why  not? 
He  had  saved  Rome.  His  existence  was  evi- 
denced by  the  recoil  of  the  invincible  Hanni- 
bal. Indeed,  the  whole  current  of  Western 
history  bears  witness  to  it.  The  annals  of 
Rome  are  full  of  such  incidents,  where  the 
gods  openly  take  control.  But  one  gradually 
becomes  suspicious  of  the  amount  of  credit 
they  receive.  For  the  Roman  made  his  religion 
so  practical  that  he  even  undertook  to  direct 
the  gods  rather  than  they  him.  If  they  op- 
posed his  will,  he  had  but  to  find  the  proper  ar- 
gument by  way  of  sacrifice  and  propitiation  to 
win  them  to  his  cause.  If  he  gave  enough  and 
gave  it  under  proper  taboos,  he  could  count 
—  generally — upon  divine  acquiescence.  The 
Calvinistic  doctrine  of  predestination  was 
turned  the  other  way ;  the  gods  lost  their  free 
will !  Or,  viewed  from  another  standpoint, 
in  that  confusion  of  religion  and  politics, 
politics  effected  a  confused  sort  of  seculariza- 
tion of  religion  itself. 


CONTRASTS  35 

This  religious  character  of  antique  society 
has  been  obscured  by  two  things,  our  ration- 
alism, which  makes  us  much  more  interested 
in  the  rational  than  in  the  irrational  in  his- 
tory, and  the  limitations  of  our  theological 
outlook. 

In  the  first  place  we  see  antiquity  in  the 
light  of  its  independent  thinkers.  Greece 
means  to  us,  generally,  the  genius  of  Socrates, 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  keen,  bold  criticism,  the 
high  achievement  of  thought  and  the  founda- 
tions of  science.  It  seldom  suggests  the  haunt- 
ing bogies  of  house  and  field.,  the  rites  of 
aversion  by  which  the  Greek,  like  the  savage 
of  to-day,  got  rid  of  the  ill-luck  that  came 
from  broken  taboos,  the  howling  fakirs  who 
brought  magic  from  the  Orient,  the  Orphic 
orgies  or  the  mysteries  which  drew  thousands 
with  their  sacrificial  pigs  along  the  road  from 
Athens  to  Eleusis.  We  see  the  world  of  a 
Pliny,  credulous,  magical,  primitive,  in  terms 
of  the  keen  analysis  of  a  Lucretius  or  the 
common  sense  of  a  Cicero.  The  humanists  of 
the  Renaissance  taught  us  to  look  that  way, 
and  ever  since  ancient  history  has  kept  to  that 
perspective.  But  nothing  could  be  more  false 
than  to  read  a  whole  history  in  terms  of  an 


36    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  J3F  TO-DAY 

enlightenment  which  was  too  weak  to  prevail 
in  its  own  time.  The  antique  victory  of  intel- 
lectual independence  was  a  limited  one,  and  it 
did  not  bring  the  emancipation  of  mankind. 
The  career  of  superstition,  which  reaches  from 
beyond  Tertiary  caves  to  the  present,  and  in 
which  Roman  empires  are  but  things  of  a  day, 
was  but  little  checked  by  Socrates  or  Aristotle. 
Philosophy  itself  was  carried  off  to  the  mys- 
teries or  absorbed  by  Christian  theologians. 
It  was  a  religion,  not  a  science,  which  presided 
over  the  fall  of  Rome.  Had  it  been  a  science, 
Rome  might  not  have  fallen  when  it  did. 

If  the  rationalism  of  the  humanists  ignored 
the  forces  of  paganism,  theology  derided 
them.  It  seemed  absurd  to  attribute  a  real 
role  to  mere  superstition.  Superstition  to  the 
theologian  is  merely  error ;  and  error  suggests 
futility.  Who  has  not  felt  the  subtle  influ- 
ence of  that  suggestion  ?  Paganism  does  not 
amount  to  much  if  viewed  as  a  false  hypothe- 
sis, invented  to  cover  the  real  facts,  which  are 
simply  part  of  God's  plan  —  a  more  or  less 
negligible  part,  since  the  main  scheme  was 
worked  out  in  Judea.  And  this  is  what  it 
does  amount  to  in  the  common  Christian  view. 
The  scheme  of  world-history  in  general  vogue 


CONTRASTS  37 

for  the  last  fifteen  hundred  years  has  main- 
tained against  paganism  a  successful  conspir- 
acy of  silence. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  early  Christians 
denied  the  reality  of  pagan  gods.  Not  at  all. 
They  were  as  sure  of  that  as  of  the  reality  of 
Christ.  It  was  not  until  paganism  passed  out- 
wardly away  that  other  theologians  interpreted 
it  in  that  sense.  Augustine  places  over  against 
the  City  of  God  a  City  of  Satan,  so  real,  so 
swarming  with  gods  and  demons,  so  complete 
in  its  sovereignty  over  the  lives  of  men,  that 
it  stands  out  in  stronger  realism,  if  less  defi- 
nite in  outline,  than  that  Divine  City  whose 
walls  of  spiritual  peace  he  rears  imaginatively 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  old.  Compared  with  the 
realities  which  he  depicts  and  derides,  the  gor- 
geous creation  of  his  imagination  and  faith  is 
as  unreal  as  it  is  sublime.  The  ancient  city 
such  as  Fustel  de  Coulanges  rediscovered  for 
us,  and  which  is  slowly  being  reconstructed  in 
the  light  of  history  and  archaeology,  is  simply 
that  City  of  Satan  denounced  by  Augustine. 

We  must  reserve  for  our  next  lecture  the 
treatment  of  Christianity  itself.  But  we  should 
miss  the  whole  point  of  this  study  if  we 


38    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

imagine  that  what  we  have  been  looking  at  is 
something  apart  from  us,  mere  matter  for  de- 
tached curiosity.  The  Orient  furnishes  us  a 
contrast,  it  is  true ;  but  savage  and  antique 
societies  furnish  chapters  of  our  own  history, 
chapters  which  are  not  yet  closed.  This  is  not 
simply  a  guessing  hypothesis  of  an  evolution- 
ist; it  is  definitely  proven. 

We  are  learning  from  savagery  the  nature 
of  civilization  and  from  the  stagnant  East  that 
of  progress.  The  discovery  of  ourselves  takes 
place  from  without.  Just  as  the  contrast  with 
the  antique  culture  opened  up  to  the  human- 
ist of  the  Renaissance  the  possibility  of  a  crit- 
ical view  of  Christendom,  so  the  new  learning 
of  to-day,  whose  classical  speech  is  mainly  the 
agglomerative  grunts  of  savages,  and  whose 
philosophy  was  ancient  when  that  of  Socrates 
was  young,  is  forcing  upon  us  a  similar  and 
much  more  radical  reconstruction.  For  the 
Renaissance  of  to-day  comes  in  upon  us  from 
all  sides. 

Archaeology  is  reconstructing  the  lost  the- 
ater of  history  and  anthropology  refilling  the 
stage.  The  long  prelude  to  the  comedie  hu- 
maine  is  slowly  being  recovered.  The  actors 
had  left  nothing  behind  their  darkened  foot- 


CONTRASTS  39 

lights  but  a  few  remains  of  the  masks  they 
wore  and  the  tools  they  used,  but  their  play 
survived.  No  classic  tragedy  can  rank  with  its 
immortality.  It  is  the  drama  of  life  in  Austra- 
lia or  Africa  to-day  as  it  was  in  the  prehis- 
toric world.  There  are  variations  in  details, 
but  the  acts  and  even  the  scenes  have  little 
changed.  From  birth  to  death,  through  ad- 
venture of  chase  or  danger  of  war,  through 
passions  of  love  and  hate  and  the  crises  that 
mark  the  change  of  acts,  the  mime  of  magic, 
religion,  and  custom  continues  in  its  primitive 
mould.  Time  is  losing  its  old  perspectives.  The 
cave  men  are  more  real  than  Romulus. 

We  talk  of  the  work  of  the  humanists  in 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  as  a  re- 
naissance. They  recovered  the  forgotten  class- 
ics and  enlarged  the  perspective  of  history  to 
include  the  pagan  world.  It  was  an  important 
service,  an  essential  step  in  the  emancipation 
of  the  intellect.  But  compared  with  the  out- 
look of  a  humanist,  the  horizon  of  to-day  has 
become  almost  infinite,  and  we  bring  to  this 
larger  knowledge  instruments  of  analysis  un- 
known before.  We  have  acquired  the  elements 
of  a  scientific  method,  which  the  humanists 
lacked.  Viewed  from  our  standpoint  of  to-day, 


40    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

theirs  was  but  another  type  of  the  mediaeval 
mind.  They  did  not  get  outside  the  mould  of 
Western  thought,  but  merely  deplored  what 
the  schoolmen  exalted  and  exalted  what  the 
schoolmen  deplored.  If,  in  spite  of  their  limi- 
tations, the  new  knowledge  which  they  brought 
was  sufficient  to  restate  the  whole  process  of 
European  history,  to  awaken  a  spirit  of  criti- 
cism which  brought  rationalism  and  science, 
the  larger  revelations  of  the  renaissance  of  to- 
day will  surely  supply  a  new  interpretation  of 
ourselves.  In  the  light  of  it,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
the  meaning  of  our  civilization  will  be  read. 


II 

DEVOLUTION  OE  EVOLUTION? 

OUR  own  past  held  all  the  possibilities  of 
India.  We  started  like  any  other  savages. 
Somehow  we  do  not  see  the  full  implication 
of  this.  The  East  is  far  away;  savagery  is 
farther  still.  Paganism  is  in  another  world 
from  ours.  We  can  view  them  and  their  his- 
tory unmoved  by  any  personal  feelings.  No 
straining  of  the  imagination  nor  sense  of  sci- 
entific fact  can  ever  make  them  quite  our 
own.  But  when  we  turn  to  Christianity,  at 
once  we  find  ourselves  alive  to  unsuspected 
emotions.  We  suddenly  realize  that  the  prob- 
lem means  us.  Has  the  scope  of  our  own 
religion  been  narrowing,  too?  It  needs  no 
trick  of  argument  to  bring  this  home  and  stir 
our  interest,  as  it  does  when  dealing  with 
other  religions  and  societies.  We  know  it  all 
too  soon !  So  deep-seated  is  this  sense  of 
identification  that  we  instinctively  resent  any 
criticism  which  seems  unsympathetic,  and  ea- 
gerly seize  upon  any  pretext  for  throwing  it  off 
the  track.  Just  where  impartiality  is  most 


42    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

needed  we  are  generally  unable  to  apply  it. 
By  a  peculiar  warp  in  our  thinking,  impartia- 
lity here  seems  like  an  attack.  We  accord  to 
our  religion  what  we  call  "  sympathetic  "  or 
"  constructive  "  criticism,  by  which  too  often 
is  meant  no  criticism  at  all,  but  merely  justi- 
fication. It  is  the  subtle  turning  of  the  apol- 
ogist upon  the  critic,  forcing  him  to  drop  his 
tools  before  he  begins  work.  And  we  are  all 
apologists.  Few  indeed  are  free  from  a  sense  of 
the  possible  impropriety  of  such  speculations. 

r  For  Christianity  has  placed  such  tremendous 
emphasis  upon  faith  that  any  independent  atti- 
tude in  which  the  creations  of  faith  are  ques- 
tioned, seems  inherently  hostile.  The  whole 
matter  is  at  once  thrown  into  an  arena  where 
anti-clerical  and  clerical,  secular-minded  and 
mystic,  will  applaud  or  jeer,  not  for  what  we 
are  really  doing,  but  because  we  seem  to  be 
hurting  or  helping  one  or  the  other  side. 

In  the  face  of  such  a  situation  there  is  only 
one  way  to  treat  the  problem  of  the  historic 
role  of  Christianity.  We  can  hardly  expect 
even  the  most  obvious  facts  to  be  accepted  at 
their  face  value.  For  the  facts  of  the  past  have 
as  personal  a  tone  as  those  of  the  present. 

;   The  only  way  to  handle  them  is  to  disown 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  43 

them.  Treat  discarded  elements  of  religion 
as  superstitions,  —  however  real  a  part  of  re- 
ligion they  were  in  their  own  time  and  how- 
ever integral  a  part  they  have  been  of  the 
process  of  evolution,  ^^  and  we  may  secure 
the  same  detached  point  of  view  for  a  survey 
of  them  as  we  have  for  the  external  world. 
The  device  is  even  likely  to  succeed  too  much, 
for  we  are  apt  to  pride  ourselves  upon  the 
process  of  denudation,  and,  regarding  "  super- 
stitions" as  always  having  been  superstitions, 
see  in  their  disappearance  no  real  significance. 
That  would  be  falsifying  history  on  the  other 
side.  For  most  superstitions  are  past  ortho- 
doxies; even  the  worst  of  them  were,  in  all 
probability,  part  of  a  genuine  religion  some- 
where, some  time.  They  are  but  the  elements 
of  yesterday's  creed  which  have  become  in- 
congruous in  the  setting  of  to-day.  But  this 
is  a  point  to  which  we  shall  come  back. 

Now  has  the  process  of  Christian  history 
seen  a  displacement  within  its  own  society 
such  as  that  indicated  by  a  contrast  with 
without?  Has  religion  advanced  or  receded 
in  the  social  scale  in  Europe  itself,  during 
the  evolution  of  our  modern  civilization  ?  The 


44    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

question  does  not  touch  the  validity  of  reli- 
gion, nor  its  force  in  individual  lives,  but  is 
one  for  history  to  answer. 

First,  as  to  primitive  Christianity.  Here 
there  is  no  possibility  of  doubt.  Religion,  in 
the  earliest  age  of  the  Church,  dominated 
everything.  There  were  miracles  and  the 
gift  of  tongues  and  the  presence  of  a  Holy 
Spirit  revealed  in  acts  of  power  and  visions 
that  drowned  out  the  very  horizons  of  re- 
ality. In  the  age  that  followed,  persecution 
on  the  one  hand  and  churchly  penance  on 
the  other  strengthened  the  fibre  and  beat 
together  the  loose  fabric  of  earlier  spiritism. 
Even  in  its  more  rational  aspects,  the  new 
society  fastened  upon  the  religious  side  of 
Greek  philosophy  for  a  justification  of  the 
whole.  It  could  not  turn  to  science  for  a 
chastening  critique,  for  there  was  no  science 
worth  turning  to.  As  we  said  before,  the  an- 
tique world  was  a  distinctly  religious  one, 
except  where  practical  affairs  had  cut  through ; 
and  Christianity  was  not  a  business.  So,  from 
whatever  angle  one  takes  it,  the  first  chapter 
of  Christian  history  was  one  saturated  with 
religion  as  no  subsequent  chapter  has  been. 
There  was  little  else  to  saturate  it  with.  We 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          45 

must  not  forget  that  Christianity  was  not 
all  Christian ;  that  it  never  has  been  so.  It  is, 
and  was  from  the  first,  drawn  from  all  an- 
tiquity, and  preserves  for  us  things  that  were 
sacred  untold  ages  before  there  was  a  temple 
at  Jerusalem.  It  was  a  new  consecration  of 
consecrated  things.  However  revolutionary  it 
seemed,  it  kept  as  much  of  the  old  regime  as 
could  be  applied  in  the  new.  The  whole  pro- 
cess was  one  of  transformation.  But  the 
taboos  of  Christianity  gained  as  much  from 
its  victories  over  those  taboos  which  it  re- 
jected as  from  those  which  it  incorporated 
into  its  own  doctrines;  for  the  prohibition  of 
sacred  things  is  often  the  very  means  for  per- 
petuating the  sense  of  their  potency  —  as 
things  of  evil,  and  the  prohibition  itself  de- 
velops into  a  new  taboo.  From  whatever  / 
angle  we  view  it,  the  world  of  primitive 
Christianity  was  one  dominated  by  religion. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Middle  Ages  there  is 
still  no  doubt  as  to  the  general  character  of 
the  situation.  Every  one  admits  that  the 
Middle  Ages  were  religious.  In  fact  the  ten- 
dency is  to  make  them  out  to  be  more  reli- 
gious than  they  really  were.  They  did  lack 
the  independent  thinkers  of  antiquity,  but 


46     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

they  were  not  without  secular  triumphs  in 
practical  form,  in  politics  and  law.  Indeed, 
the  national  state  which  they  produced  was 
perhaps  the  first  genuine  political  creation  of 
the  secular  ideal.  The  confusion  of  religion 
and  politics  which  had  marked  the  city-state 
was  no  longer  possible  when  the  religion  was 
attached,  theoretically  at  least,  to  the  un- 
worldly city  of  the  soul.  The  Church,  to  be 
sure,  did  not  limit  itself  to  its  patria  coelestis 
and  presided  over  as  much  as  it  could  of  mun- 
dane things.  But  the  spiritual  character  of 
the  "  Kingdom  of  Christ "  was  urged  upon 
forgetful  theologians  by  lawyers  and  driven 
home  by  the  men-at-arms  in  the  service  of 
Henry  II  or  Philip  IV. 

Yet  the  Middle  Ages  were  religious.  Their 
monuments  in  the  shape  of  churches  and 
cathedrals  are  sufficient  witness.  There  is  an 
old  and  now  exploded  legend  that,  as  the 
world  approached  the  year  1000,  in  penitence 
and  fear  of  that  final  date  for  the  coming  of 
Christ  it  covered  itself,  as  the  monkish  chron- 
icler said,  with  the  white  garment  of  churches. 
The  legend  is  false ;  the  creations  of  that 
most  enduring  type  of  architecture,  the  Ro- 
manesque, were  not  intended,  appropriate 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          47 

as  it  may  seem,  to  be  left  here,  after  the 
drama  of  history  was  over,  like  sepulchral 
monuments  in  the  silence  of  a  deserted  world. 
They  were  built,  like  those  before  and  after, 
out  of  the  depth  of  a  religious  impulse  which 
had  many  millenniums  instead  of  one  behind 
it,  and  passed  on  with  more  notable  creations 
still  into  the  centuries  that  followed.  Gothic 
art  is  the  noblest  outward  tribute  mankind 
has  paid  to  Christianity.  And  as  religion 
always  confuses  itself  with  other  things,  the 
mediaeval  devotion  which  it  inspired  was  hal- 
lowed by  ideals  of  loveliness.  We  can  have 
but  little  idea  now  of  the  contrast  between  the 
misery  of  mediaeval  life  and  the  splendor  of 
the  expression  of  its  religion.  How  magically 
beautiful  the  parish  church  must  have  been 
beside  the  hovels  of  the  serfs  who  brought 
it  the  pathos  of  their  offerings !  No  other 
miracle,  even  of  its  saints,  was  more  wonderful 
than  this,  which  transformed  the  moments 
spent  within  its  walls  to  a  dream  of  unearthly 
peace  and  kindled  the  imagination  of  unim- 
aginative men.  Even  where  culture  flourished, 
in  cities  and  at  courts,  it  merely  repeated  in 
loftier  form  the  same  contrast  with  reality  and 
enshrined  the  same  miracles.  A  flask  of  oil  was 


48    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

responsible  for  the  glory  of  Rheims  Cathedral, 
the  crown  of  thorns  for  the  Sainte  Chapelle. 

But  we  are  apt  to  misinterpret  and  to  ex- 
aggerate  this  mediaeval  religiosity,  to  regard 
it  as  a  thing  peculiar  to  the  Middle  Ages  and 
to  the  Christian  world.  This  over-emphasis 
obscures  the  real  drift  of  history,  since  it 
hides  the  non-Christian,  primitive  world  which 
preceded  the  mediaeval,  and  so  gives  to  what 
may  have  been  merely  a  phase  of  Christian- 
ity the  appearance  of  a  growth  in  the  reli- 
gious control  of  society.  There  were  as  many 
shrines  in  antiquity  as  thuse  for  mediaeval 
relics.  The  temples  crowned  the  arx  or  acrop- 
olis as  the  churches  did  the  cities  of  Chris- 
tendom. There -were  altars  at  the  cross-roads 
long  before  the  saints  appropriated  them  — 
altars  in  the  acre  plots  for  the  Lares,  in  the 
house  for  the  Penates ;  and  the  genii  were  to 
be  propitiated  on  every  hand.  Even  if  we 
grant  such  sprites  a  lessening  role  in  the  an- 
tique world,  the  real  past  of  the  Middle  Ages 
lay  in  the  German  forests.  Compared  with 
that,  mediaeval  religiosity  is  not  so  remark- 
able. We  know  strangely  little  of  Teutonic 
paganism  and  its  scope  in  society.  But  we  do 
know  that  there  is  not  an  evidence  of  the 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  49 

Church's  power,  in  miracles  at  its  shrines,  in 
awed  submission  to  excommunication,  in  the 
stern  enforcement  of  morals,  in  inquisitions 
and  crusades,  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  forms 
less  dramatic  but  probably  not  less  effective 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  sav- 
agery. When  the  gods  of  the  Teutonic  forests 
yielded  before  the  missionaries  of  the  new  re- 
ligion, it  is  likely  that  there  was  for  the  time 
being  an  accentuation  of  the  role  of  religion 
in  society.  But  of  the  subsequent  history 
one  cannot  be  so  sure.  We  have  it  from  the 
hands  of  monks  and  suspect  their  perspec- 
tives. We  do  know  that  the  age  that  built  the 
Gothic  cathedrals  was  that  in  which  the  law- 
yers were  already  building  up  the  king's 
courts  and  limiting  ecclesiastical  jurisprudence. 
The  money  which  flowed  into  the  church  as 
the  tribute  to  it  of  society  was  the  very  cause 
of  the  first  assertion  of  independence  on  the 
part  of  the  national  state,  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  In  fact,  the  more  closely  we  look 
into  the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  more 
we  see  that  it  was  then  that  the  foundations 
were  laid  of  those  political  and  purely  secular 
structures  which  were  destined  to  dominate  in 
our  own  times. 


50    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

This  is  not  the  place,  however,  to  attempt 
to  reconstruct  our  idea  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
nor  to  weigh  their  secular  over  against  their 
religious  elements.  For  when  we  turn  to  mod- 
ern times  we  realize  that,  whatever  may  have 
been  the  secular  gains  of  the  Middle  Ages, — 
and  they  were  considerable,  —  we  are  now  in  a 
different  world.  A  revolution  has  intervened. 
We  are  living  in  another  era,  and  so  vast  is 
the  change  between  our  society  and  that  of 
crusading  and  cathedral-building  Europe  that 
we  can  hardly  realize  that  the  process  of  that 
change  was  already  strongly  at  work  so  long 
ago.  The  secular  advance  has  now  so  accel- 
erated its  pace  as  to  obscure  its  own  past 
history.  We  seem  as  far  away  from  puritan 
religiosity  as  from  the  age  of  St.  Francis  and 
St.  Dominic.  Yet  viewed,  not  in  terms  of  loss 
but  of  gain,  that  is,  in  terms  of  the  achievement 
of  secular  control,  the  seventeenth  century, 
with  its  rise  of  the  merchant  class,  its  national 
organization  for  trade  and  bullion,  its  rise  to 
power  of  parliaments,  its  colonies,  literatures, 
and  science,  was  the  very  dawn  of  the  new  rev- 
olutionary era. 

Now  in  the  light  of  all  the  ages  what  are 


DEVOLUTION  OH  EVOLUTION?          51 

we?  Compare  our  present  world  not  simply 
with  the  Middle  Ages,  but  with  the  Orient, 
with  primitive  society  and  antiquity,  and  see 
by  contrast  what  is  there  that  is  distinctively 
ours.  We  find  at  once  that  we,  too,  share 
largely  in  the  Oriental,  primitive,  antique,  and 
mediaeval.  But  we  have  something  more  — 
modernity.  And  the  key  to  modernity  is  con- 
trol. It  means  that  we  are  facing  our  problems 
directly  and  not  in  a  medium  of  taboo,  that 
we  are  working  out  our  destiny  with  grow- 
ing self-consciousness  and  a  larger  vision  of 
realities. 

About  the  character  of  that  contrast  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  It  is  the  same  no  matter 
which  way  we  turn.  It  is  a  contrast  of  reli- 
gious societies  against  secular.  No  other  soci- 
ety is  or  has  been  so  secular  as  ours ;  nowhere 
else  is  the  tendency  so  consistently  away  f  romx 
religious  control.  This  is  the  direction,  os- 
tensibly, of  what  we  call  our  progress.  It  is  the 
mark  of  the  European  as  distinguished  from 
the  non-European  society,  of  the  modern  as 
contrasted  with  the  ancient  or  mediaeval,  of 
the  scientific  as  opposed  to  the  theological. 

Examine  first  the  structure  of  our  society. 
Government  is  everywhere  becoming  republi- 


52  RELIGIOUS  ;REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

can,  in  reality  if  not  in  name.  But  government 
was  at  some  time  generally,  if  not  universally, 
the  affair  of  kings.  Now  kings,  reaLkings,  are 
a  product  of  religion ;  they  are  divine  or  semi- 
divine,  or  acquire  some  fraction  of  divinity. 
That  is  one  reason  why  we  republicans,  espe- 
cially in  America,  cannot  understand  the  atti- 
tude toward  them  of  their  subjects.  They  were, 
in  many  places,  the  very  incarnation  of  a  god, 
and  where  not  regarded  as  divine  their  per- 
sons were,  and  are,  sacred.  The  rules  of  court 
etiquette  preserve  the  spirit  of  the  taboos  which 
they  replace.  The  scepter  and  diadem,  the  royal 
purple  —  which  it  was  death  for  a  plain  Ro- 
man citizen  to  wear,  —  the  apple  of  empire, 
thrones  and  coronation  chairs,  are  substitutes 
of  civilization  for  those  regalia  of  drums,  sticks, 
and  umbrellas,  themselves  invested  with  magic 
power  to  curse  or  kill  any  treasonable  per- 
son who  ventures  so  much  as  to  touch  or  even 
look  at  them,  —  such  as  form  the  insignia  of 
royalty  in  Malay.  The  king  alone  can  handle 
his  regalia.  He  is  himself,  like  the  drum  and 
the  umbrella,  a  thing  taboo,  a  sacred  object. 
His  touch,  which  had  been  secularized  by  the 
seventeenth  century  to  the  treatment  of  skin 
diseases  only,  was  so  charged  with  "  medicine" 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  53 

in  the  South  Seas  that  it  might  kill  in- 
stead of  cure.  The  divine  right  of  kings  and 
the  sacred  character  of  monarchy  in  general 
is  no  fiction  of  courtly  panegyrists,  maintained 
by  standing  armies.  It  exists  from  the  dawn 
of  society.  Altars  to  Caesar  may  have  symbol- 
ized the  rational  forces  of  law  and  order,  but 
their  meaning  for  the  populations  of  the  em- 
pire is  not  to  be  sought  in  the  secular  activi- 
ties of  any  one  Caesar  or  dynasty  of  Caesars, 
but  in  that  religious  awe  which  still,  though 
in  slight  degree,  George  V  shares  with  the 
kings  of  the  Cannibal  Islands. 

To-day,  however,  the  divine  kingship  has  dis- 
appeared. When,  now  and  again,  a  Hohenzol- 
lern  ventures  to  protest,  he  is  met  with  a  chorus 
of  derision  and  obliged  in  future  to  read  speeches 
prepared  for  him  by  his  ministers.  The  regalia 
in  the  tower  are  on  public  exhibition  and  in- 
jure no  profane  eyes  by  their  taboo ;  the  king's 
evil  is  treated  in  hospitals.  The  king  himself 
is  a  symbol  of  the  past. 

Legislation  is  no  longer  presided  over  by 
those  skilled  in  omens  and  auguries.  Where 
priests  control  politics,  the  judgment  of  the 
Western  world  is  that  we  have  a  "  mediaeval " 
state  of  affairs.  We  tend  to  go  so  far  as  to  ob- 


54     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

/ 

ject  to  them  bringing  any  pressure  of  religious 
threat  or  promise  to  affect  our  voters  or  repre- 
sentatives.  'Religion  still  enters  into  our  poli- 
tics,  but  only  indirectly,  through  its  influence 
upon  each  citizen)  The  basis  of  religion  has 
shifted  from  society  to  the  individual.  What 
were  the  creation  and  the  expression  of  the 
group,  in  which  the  individual  used  to  share 
simply  because  he  belonged  to  the  group,  has 
become  a  matter  of  personal  experience  and  pri- 
vate judgment.  Religion  is  no  longer  a  thing 
of  the  state  with  us,  and  is  growing  less  so  else- 
where. It  is  interpreted  by  the  courts  of  the 
United  States  as  a  personal  relationship  be- 
tween God  and  man, —  an  idea  unthinkable 
to  Roman  or  Japanese.  It  does  not  assume 
command  and  dictate  action,  as  it  does  in 
Islam  and  did  in  ancient  Judea.  Scruples  still 
to  some  extent  embody  the  ancient  taboo,  but 
they  are  generally  little  more  than  checks  upon 
conduct;  seldom  are  they  spurs  to  positive 
action,  and  when  they  measure  their  strength 
with  economic  interest  or  national  desire  for 
power,  they  are  as  weak  as  Machiavelli  be- 
lieved  them  to  be. 

A  religion  whose  scope  in  public  life  is  re- 
duced to  the  exhortation  of  morality  is  not  in 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  55 

command  of  the  situation.  Unless  it  can  inter- 
fere and  by  an  act  of  power  compel  the  alle- 
giance of  men,  it  has  lost  control.  For  morality 
itself  is  being  secularized.  We  draw  the  line 
between  sin  and  crime,  and  leave  sin  for  pun- 
ishment in  another  world.  Our  police  are 
charged  with  the  public  maintenance  of  our 
morals,  and  to  touch  those  morals  with  emo- 
tion gives  us  but  a  poor  shadow  of  that  religion, 
which  throughout  the  centuries  has  surrounded 
with  supernatural  terrors  every  violation  of 
social  rule,  inflicting  with  unquestioned  power 
the  penalties  of  disease,  mutilation,  or  death. 
We  see  morals  now  as  a  problem  of  our  own 
to  work  out,  not  as  a  cringing  to  dictates  of 
superstition.  Psychology  shows  us  that  even 
our  consciences  are  mainly  the  echoes  of  social 
usages,  and  so  that  secret  monitor  becomes  an 
agent  in  secularization  rather  than  a  clue  to 
divine  mysteries.  Charity  has  become  a  busi- 
ness and  a  social  duty,  a  thing  of  the  head 
rather  than  of  the  heart,  a  cooperation  in 
social  uplift  rather  than  a  mere  avenue  to  saint- 
liness  for  the  giver  of  alms'. 

The  institutions  of  the  state  —  those  which 
I  were  once  the  very  nurseries  of  religion  —  are 
'  the  most  secular  things  we  have  to-day.  Law 


56     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

itself  was  once  of  divine  origin ;  now  we  recog- 
nize that  it  is  its  very  human  quality  which 
makes  it  law,  as  over  against  taboo  on  the  one 
hand  and  morals  on  the  other.  The  test  of  law 
is  whether  or  not  it  can  be  enforced  by  real  pen- 
alties. Where  the  sanction  is  either  psycholo- 
gical terror  or  social  disapproval  we  have  no 
law.  Law  does  not  deal  so  lightly  with  those 
who  violate  it;  it  does  not  leave  the  punish- 
ment in  the  hands  of  religion  or  custom.  It 
s  executes  its  own  judgments,  by  its  own  officers. 
-  ^  iThe  growth  of  law  is  a  symbol  of  the  secular 
st^te.  Compare  the  English  law,  for  instance, 
with  the  Talmud  saturated  in  magic,  or  with 
the  law  of  the  Mohammedan  world,  where 
theology  and  jurisprudence  are  indissoluble, 
and  you  acquire  a  new  respect  for  the  simple 
principles  of  justice  which  were  worked  out 
over  questions  of  Adam  the  Smith's  cabbages 
or  Walter  the  Miller's  cows  on  the  common. 

Private  property  is  a  mark  of  civilization. 
Its  protection,  now  committed  to  those  secular 
institutions,  the  courts,  was  mainly  taken  over 
by  them  from  religion.  Although  violence  and 
the  law  of  might  share  with  religion  the  credit 
of  originating  and  perpetuating  personal  pos- 
session, taboo  (the  luck  or  curse  in  things  them- 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  57 

selves)  is  the  most  powerful  sanction  primitive 
society  knows.  It  is  so  strong  as  to  resis_tsecu- 
larizatiqn —  into  civil  law — except  where  secu- 
larization is  most  vigorous.  Even  the  life  of 
secular  Europe  runs  along  within  the  grooves 
of  custom  based  on  taboo,  much  more  than 
within  the  formal  stipulations  of  law.  In  Poly- 
nesia, where  taboo  is  strongest,  the  civil  law 
has  hardly  got  a  start.  The  system  of  taboo 
is  itself  sufficient.  There  a  wisp  of  grass  tied 
to  an  object  is  enough  to  make  it  one's  own, 
by  arming  it  with  the  terrors  of  religion.  Pos- 
session is  nowhere  more  readily  recognized 
than  where  the  belief  in  contagious  magic 
prevails.  The  stone  that  you  have  fashioned 
acquires  a  part  of  you.  Break  it,  you  suffer. 
Steal  it,  the  owner  is  within  your  power. 
The  beads  you  wear  become  you ;  if  they  are 
charmed  beads  they  will  not  let  another  touch 
them  without  hurting  him.  They  will  burn 
his  hand,  or  bring  him  bad  luck.  One  need 
not  go  to  Polynesia  for  such  ideas.  They  are 
familiar  to  us  from  childhood.  The  idea  of 
personal  property  is  not  a  creation  of  the  civil 
law,  but  the  law  a  creation  of  it. 

Politics  and  religion  are  now  seldom  linked 
by  us  except  by  way  of  contrast.  This  may 


58    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

be  partly  due  to  that  theology  which  reaches 
back  to  beyond  Augustine  and  opposes  the 
Church  to  the  World.  But  the  opposition  is 
taken  up  now  from  the  other  side ;  politics  in- 
sists upon  it  most.  The  politician  who  handles 
his  politics  according  to  the  precepts  of  his 
religion  is  marked  out  either  for  fame  or  ridi- 
cule —  perhaps  for  both.  Fame  awaits  the 
success  in  such  difficult  emprise,  but  ridicule 
is  sure  to  come  if  there  is  not  behind  the  judg- 
ments which  he  forms  a  strong,  good  sense 
which  does  not  allow  the  religion  to  go  too 
far.  If  his  spiritual  guidance  is  likely  to  lead 
to  economic  ruin,  it  is  rejected  as  out  of  place. 
Madero's  spiritistic  inspirations,  for  instance, 
were  the  main  source  of  his  undoing.  So,  as 
society  organizes  itself  more  and  more  effi- 
ciently, it  places  the  burden  of  its  control  in 
hands  directly  responsible  to  it.  The  states- 
man who  is  too  religious  may  come  to  regard 
himself  as  a  belated  successor  of  the  king  by 
divine  right,  responsible  to  God  alone.  How- 
ever noble  his  aspiration,  society  is  suspicious 
of  such  a  man,  unless  he  proves  his  worth  by 
success  in  worldly  things.  It  labels  him  a 
visionary,  and  invites  to  its  councils  practical 
men  who  know  what  they  and  society  need 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          59 

here  and  now.  No  voices  in  dreams  disturb 
the  Hannibals  or  Constantines  of  to-day ;  and, 
as  superstition  ceases  its  direct  interference, 
orthodoxy  accommodates  itself  to  a  less  dom- 
inant role.  Men  fall  back  upon  themselves. 
Forced  to  work  out  their  own  destiny  by  de- 
liberate choice,  they  strengthen  and  perfect 
the  organs  of  social  judgment.  Constitution- 
making  in  our  modern  states  is  a  war  upon 
arbitrary  action.  It  limits  more  and  more  the 
scope  of  emotional  impulses.  It  safeguards 
the  achievements  of  the  age-long  struggle  for 
control. 

Just  as  the  structure  of  modern  society  is 
less  religious  than  that  of  those  which  lack 
modernity,  so  is  custom,  that  unwritten  consti- 
tution of  the  commonplace,  that  mirror  of  social 
habit  and  outlook.  Custom  J.sjthe_ reservoir  of 
conservatism,  and  it  perpetuates  most  of  our 
old  taboos.  It  prescribes  the  whole  regime  of 
what  is  "  good  form."  Yet  even  in  this  sphere 
the  secular  processes  are  at  work.  Take  our 
holidays,  for  instance.  They  do  not  have  much 
to  do  with  religion  now.  They  are  seldom 
"holy  days."  The  saints  —  as  such  —  have 
disappeared  from  all  ordinary  calendars,  along 
with  the  gods  who  preceded  them  and  in 


60    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

whose  honor  the  calendar  itself  was  invented. 
St.  Patrick  furnishes  the  occasion  for  a  pro- 
cession on  Fifth  Avenue.  St.  George  is  hon- 
ored by  a  dinner.  But  the  birthday  of  George 
Washington  or  Queen  Victoria  or  the  anni- 
versary of  the  taking  of  the  Bastille  share 
equal  honors  with  even  national  saints'  days. 
It  is  only  when  one  reads  deeply  into  ancient 
history  and  sees  how  time  itself  was  first  marked 
out  by  sacred  barriers,  or  when  one  sees  the 
fearful  power  of  the  primitive  periods  of 
taboo,  that  one  realizes  where  we  have  got  in 
our  secularization  of  time. 

There  is  growing  up  a  new  morality,  which 
substitutes  for  the  old  beliefs  a  sense  of  hu- 
man needs ;  a  new  morality  to  which  religion 
accommodates  itself.  The  Church  emphasizes 
more  and  more  its  non-religious  aspects,  its 
secular^  appeal,  its  ideal  leadership  in  the 
brotherhood  of  man.  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Associations  advertise  their  swimming- 
baths.  They  boast  a  culture  of  the  body  like 
Greek  pagans  instead  of  ascetic  virtues  of 
Christian  saints,  and  sometimes  try  to  make  re- 
ligion attractive  by  placing  the  accent  on  other 
things.  Yet  in  spite  of  such  efforts,  church- 
going,  if  gaining  at  all,  is  by  no  means  keep- 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          61 

ing  pace  with  the  gain  in  its  worldly  rivals. 
The  week-end  excursion  is  a  modern  invention. 
Cathedrals  in  France  are  maintained  as  na- 
tional monuments  of  art.  Charles  Booth  has 
shown  in  his  great  survey  of  London  that  only 
about  one  quarter  of  the  people  in  that  city  of 
churches  ever  see  the  inside  of  one.  Cinema- 
tographs and  paid  singers  fail  to  hold  the 
working-class.  And  this  is  in  a  sphere  where 
custom  —  and  taboo  —  counts  most.  To  be 
sure,  many  facts  may  be  cited  against  these ; 
religious  activity  cannot  be  measured  easily  in 
statistics.  But  we  are  not  dealing  here  with  J 
the  question  of  whether  people  are  more  or 
less  religious,  than  they  used  to  be,  but  whether 
they  make  religion  more  or  less  an  element  in 
society.  We  must  look  at  the  total  trend  of 
custom,  as  of  institutional  development,  not 
merely  at  isolated  examples. 

Now  there  is  no  larger  social  fact  in  the 
modern  world  than  its  national  free  education. 
Such  a  force  for  moulding  the  ideas  of  the 
coming  generations  was  never  in  the  control 
of  secular  powers  in  any  previous  age.  Reli- 
gion has  realized  the  importance  of  it,  and  only 
where  warring  creeds  refuse  to  compromise  has 
the  Church  acquiesced  in  the  existence  of  such 


62    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

an  agent  of  unreligion.  But  the  secular  schools, 
although  they  have  to  fight  for  their  existence, 
—  and  they  seem  face  to  face  with  serious  at- 
tacks in  America,  —  have  become  an  ideal  of 
democracy,  whose  militant  forces  in  Europe  at 
the  polls  face  anathemas  undaunted  to  secure 
for  the  children  an  education  in  which  science 
and  enlightenment  shall  be  untouched  by 
dogma.  There  is  the  same  trend  in  the  curric- 
ula of  colleges  and  universities.  Theological 
faculties  dwarf  or  disappear.  Theological  pres- 
idents grow  fewer  and  fewer,  while  twenty 
years  ago  they  were  in  control  almost  every- 
where. Even  the  great  public  schools  of  Eng- 
land, where  mellowing  tradition  lasts  so  long, 
have  begun  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  laymen. 
A  clerical  school  law  passed  last  year  in  Belgium 
brought  the  country  to  the  verge  of  revolu- 
tion. France  is  committed  irrevocably  to  the 
secular  school  system,  and  the  Sorbonne,  that 
greatest  centre  of  scholastic  theology,  is  en- 
tirely in  the  hands  of  the  anti-clerical.  In  Ger- 
many the  battle  is  still  on,  but  the  majority  of 
the  nation  has  definitely  pronounced  for  secu- 
larization. The  present  generation  is  deter- 
mined that  the  next  shall  meet  its  problems 
untrammeled  by  theological  presuppositions. 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  63 

The  outlook  of  humanity  is  changing  even 
more  than  its  institutions  or  its  customs.  These 
will  follow  the  outlook.  The  meaning  of  it  all ; 
is  to  be  found  in  the  work  of  science.  We 
must  not  forget  that  science  is  but  a  few  years 
old.  There  was  none  ever  —  none  worth  talk- 
ing of  —  before  our  time.  It  is  already  the 
largest  influence,  the  most  vital  force  in  the 
world  to-day.  It  does  not  enter  the  field  of 
emotion,  in  which  most  of  our  lives  are  passed, 
and  console  or  cheer  us  with  the  promise  of 
immortality,  but  it  places  power  in  the  hands 
of  intelligence,  and  makes  devotee  and  skeptic 
alike  work  at  its  machines,  build  its  cities  and 
prepare  its  laboratories.  It  is  not  merely  the 
subtle  thought  secreted  in  a  brain,  but  it  is  in- 
corporated in  iron  and  steel  and  moves  in  the 
forces  of  nature.  It  has  remade  the  universe, 
and  restated  the  mystery  thereof  in  its  own 
terms. 

The  wind  does  not  now  blow  where  it 
listeth,  but  where  other  things  —  heat  and 
pressures  —  list  that  it  shall  blow.  Disease  is 
no  longer  a  divine  affliction,  but  a  violation  or 
consequence  of  natural  laws.  The  battle  be- 
tween science  and  the  old  religion  has  been  a 
real  one,  and  the  result  in  any  case  is  not  the 


64    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

defeat  of  science.  In  so  far  as  control  of  so- 
ciety is  concerned,  Dr.  Osier  is  justified  in  say- 
ing of  religion  that  "  The  battle  of  Armaged- 
don has  been  fought  —  and  lost." 

We  might  carry  the  evidence  of  this  secu- 
larizing trend  of  the  modern  world  through 
every  department  of  intellect  or  action.  Phi- 
losophy gives  up  its  absolutes  and  interprets 
phenomena  in  terms  of  evolution.  History,  in 
form  as  well  as  content,  mirrors  the  change, 
as  the  myths  of  the  gods  give  way  to  the  epic 
of  the  hero,  and  then,  through  lessening  mira- 
cles, the  chronicle,  born  in  the  temple  and 
nourished  in  the  monastery,  becomes  at  last 
the  purely  human  story  of  purely  human 
things.  Even  language  reflects  the  process  in 
its  colorless  words.  "  Psychology,"  for  in- 
stance, brings  up  no  image  of  the  maiden 
Psyche,  or  the  breath  of  life  which  also  be- 
came "  spirit."  Just  as  our  bodies  are  museums 
of  comparative  anatomy,  with  traces  of  every 
ancestor  from  the  first  cell-protoplasm  up,  so 
in  our  society  we  retain  the  religious  organs 
of  the  past.  But  like  the  muscles  of  a  claw 
which  are  obliged  to  hold  this  pencil  with 
which  I  write,  they  are  more  and  more  subor- 
dinated to  other  things. 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  65 

Augustine's  dream  of  the  City  of  God  has 
not  been  realized.  The  City  of  Satan  —  of 
primitive  and  primal  religious  belief  —  was 
stronger  than  he  dreamed.  But  the  great  City 
of  Religion,  whose  walls  include  the  seven  seas, 
and  which  has  held  within  them  the  aspira- 
tions and  fears  of  untold  centuries,  is  now 
giving  way  to  the  City  of  Man.  And  the  new 
city  is  a  civitas  tefrenaj* it  gives  up  ideals 
that  suited  a  world  to  come  for  practical  poli- 
tics in  a  stern  present.  Its  characteristic  monu- 
ments are  not  temples  or  cathedrals.  It  has  a 
place  for  them  alongside  its  libraries,  colleges, 
and  hospitals ;  but  they  are  only  one  symbol 
of  its  aspiration.  It  is  less  interested  in  heaven 
and  hell  than  in  unemployment  and  sanitation. 
It  is  cleaning  streets  and  tearing  down  our 
slums.  If  religion  blocks  the  way  of  its  re- 
forms, it  labels  that  religion  superstition  and 
brushes  it  from  its  path.  Even  its  evils  are 
frankly  human ;  its  lust  for  power,  its  rivalries, 
wars  and  armaments,  the  slavery  it  owns  in 
factory  and  mine,  the  idleness  and  luxury  its 
industry  produces.  We  have  no  illusions  about 
these  things.  They  are  ours,  for  better  or 
worse.  We  are  responsible  for  them,  and  know 
it.  We  can  no  longer  escape  by  claiming  that 


66     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

its  good  or  ill  are  God's  or  Satan's.  The  City 
of  Civilization  is  in  our  hands ;  and  the  know- 
ledge that  it  rests  with  us  to  make  it  fit  to  be 
the  symbol  of  either  is  the  inspiration  to  make 
it  worthy  the  dignity  of  man. 


Eppur  si  muove!  It  is  now  the  turn  of 
the  theologian  to  repeat  the  muttered  phrase 
of  Galileo.  And  with  equal  justice.  Religion 
moves,  vast  and  potent,  in  the  world  to-day. 
One  must  be  blind,  indeed,  not  to  see  the  evi- 
dences of  its  power  in  both  the  structure  and 
the  movement  of  our  modern  world.  Indeed, 
when  we  turn  from  the  external  contrasts  of 
history  and  anthropology  to  the  question  of 
its  vitality  we  strike  a  different  problem.  Re- 
ligion seems  as  constant  a  factor  in  humanity 
as  gravitation  in  the  material  world.  But 
whereas  gravitation  is  most  in  evidence  where 
there  is  motion,  and  eludes  detection  where 
things  are  at  rest,  —  although  rest,  being  a 
counterpoise  of  forces,  really  embodies  more 
motion,  — •  religion,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
most  in  evidence  where  society  is  standing 
still,  in  the  slowly  moving  East  or  the  still 
more  static  savagery.  In  the  swift  movement 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          67 

of  modern  life  it  may  hide  itself  as  gravita- 
tion does  in  the  immutable. 

We  are  pressing  our  metaphor  like  an  in- 
quisitor; but  it  is  time  we  opened  the  inqui- 
sition upon  this  proposition  of  the  secular 
advance,  which  has  kept  us  occupied  so  long. 
For,  the  moment  we  lose  sight  of  the  non- 
Christian  world,  and  give  up  our  external 
measurement,  the  perspective,  which  seemed 
so  straight  when  viewed  from  central  Aus- 
tralia or  Eangoon,  becomes  a  labyrinth.  We 
are  at  once  confronted  with  a  mass  of  contra- 
dictions. The  outlines  of  history  and  the  ten- 
dencies of  to-day  become  obscured.  The  growth 
of  social  control,  which,  viewed  from  with- 
out, seems  to  mark  modern  effort,  is  dragged 
like  a  vanquished  thing  in  the  wake  of  incal- 
culable forces,  apparently  ignorant  even  of  its 
existence.  The  evolution  of  our  secular  civili- 
zation, when  examined  more  closely,  seems 
hardly  more  than  a  slight  rearrangement  of 
the  elements  in  previous  stages  of  society. 
The  world  to-day  is  surely  but  a  mere  read- 
justment to  new  conditions  of  essentially  the  7X 
same  things  as  made  up  the  world  of  the  sav- 
age. Plus  $a  change,  plus  $a  reste  la  meme 
chose  ! 


68    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

The  modern  world  is,  after  all,  very  primi- 
tive—  and  very  religious.  Eeligion  is  identi- 
fied, by  us,  as  by  all  other  people,  with  estab- 
lished order  and  upright  conduct;  it  is  a 
bulwark  of  conservatism  and  a  slogan  for  re- 
form. The  structure  of  our  society  shows  this 
at  a  glance.  We  do  not  demand  that  our  poli- 
ticians shall  be  religious  men,  but  we  do  de- 
mand that  they  should  not  be  irreligious,  — 
frankly  and  actively  opposed  to  our  religion. 
Eeligion  may  not  now  interfere  as  it  used  to 
with  the  policies  of  state,  but  it  forces  from 
those  hostile  or  indifferent  the  tribute  of 
silence  or  hypocrisy.  What  Voltaire  called 
the  "  infamous  thing  "  turns  the  brand  of  in- 
famy upon  those  who  would  so  brand  it.  The 
very  name  of  Voltaire,  whom  a  great  theo- 
logian recently  termed  the  greatest  religious 
leader  of  modern  times,  is  still  execrated  by 
the  society  whose  sense  he  outraged  by  too 
revolutionary  methods  of  reform.  "  Atheist " 
and  " infidel"  are  names  of  ignominy,  even 
when  the  victim  stands  among  the  intellectual 
leaders  of  the  race;  because  unbelief  is  social 
sacrilege.  If  committed  in  public  it  marks  a 
man  out  for  the  aversion  of  society  —  not 
merely  of  the  Church,  but  of  common,  every- 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?  69 

day  society  —  as  it  does  in  the  primitive 
world.  Such  anarchists  of  religion  are  likely 
to  find  themselves  excluded  from  that  great 
fraternity  of  mutual  trust  and  friendly  confi- 
dence which  holds  the  rights  of  citizenship  in 
the  City  of  the  Respectable.  To  be  sure,  the 
ban  of  society  is  not  so  effective  as  in  primi- 
tive life  or  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  modern 
culprit  is  not  so  likely  to  suffer  from  the  psy- 
chological terrors  of  the  taboo,  and  the  effec- 
tive engines  of  conformity  are  lacking.  With 
him  it  is  only  a  question  of  morals,  inducing, 
not  enforcing,  compliance.  But  the  attitudes 
are  much  the  same.  *\ 

When  we  turn  from  public  to  private  life, 
religion  is  stronger  yet,  for  the  religion  of  the 
West  is  mainly  personal.  The  amount  varies, 
to  be  sure,  for  in  the  modern  world,  where 
independent  judgment  plays  some  role,  even 
when  one  finds  uniformity  in  action  there  is 
by  no  means  bound  to  be  uniformity  in  belief. 
Conformity  in  action  tends  to  bring  conform- 
ity in  creed,  as  we  see  in  the  Catholic  sons  of 
converted  Huguenots  in  France  and  elsewhere ; 
but  when  faith  is  open  to  all  the  influences  of 
science,  business,  politics,  and  industry,  as  it  is 
with  us,  and  each  of  these  plays  in  upon  the 


70    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

other,  distracting  interest  and  commanding 
attention,  the  amount  of  vitality  of  any  one  fac- 
tor, and  of  religious  belief  in  particular,  not 
only  varies  between  every  two  individuals,  but 
varies  in  the  individual  so  that  it  is  never  the 
same  at  any  two  moments.  Up  and  down  our 
streets  there  is  as  much  variation  in  our  fel- 
low-citizens in  superstition,  religion,  mysti- 
cism, and  their  opposites,  as  in  the  property 
they  own,  the  work  they  do,  or  the  clothes 
they  wear.  But  in  spite  of  variations,  religion, 
little  or  much,  is  a  common  denominator  of 
the  mental  outlook  of  the  vast  mass  of  modern 
citizenship,  just  as  property  is  the  common 
mark  of  their  respectability. 

The  strength  of  religion  is  threefold,  in 
I  habits,  both  of  body  and  mind,  in  conscious 
belief,  from  superstition  to  reasoned  creeds, 
and  in  mysticism.  These  interwork,  and  in 
modern  religion  all  three  are  generally  pres- 
ent. Of  them,  habit  is  the  strongest,  and 
mysticism  the  weakest,  while  faith  serves  as  a 
sort  of  bridge  between  the  two,  reaching  from 
the  dimmest  flicker  of  appreciation  of  habit- 
ual acts  to  the  bold  conceptions  of  scholastic 
theology,  from  perceived  sensations  to  rea- 
soned systems  of  the  universe. 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          71 

Habit  is  the  thing  that  holds  the  world  to- 
gether, civilized  as  well  as  uncivilized.  It  is 
the  largest  thing  in  society  as  it  is  in  indi- 
vidual life.  There  it  is  embodied  in  institu- 
tions, laws,  and  morals;  here  in  action,  acqui- 
escence, routine.  Originality,  the  rejection  of 
habitjjs  a  rare  gift ;  at  least  it  is  exhibited  in 
small  quantities.  Society  accepts  it  as  a  plea- 
sant diversion  so  long  as  the  exhibition  is  not 
to  be  taken  too  seriously;  but,  when  origi- 
nality shows  its  true  anarchic  colors,  a  very 
slight  amount  of  it  is  all  that  is  needed  to 
send  one  to  prison  or  the  asylum,  as  it  once 
brought  outlawry  and  lynching.  It  is  a  denial 
of  the  infallibility  of  the  commonplace;  and 
through  the  evolution  of  our  species,  from 
the  horde  of  gregarious  animals,  that  kill 
their  abnormal  members,  to  the  inquisition 
and  to  the  immigration  laws  of  the  United 
States,  no  penalty  has  been  surer  than  that 
of  extermination  or  exclusion  for  it.  So 
habit  andjcustom  rule.  Pew  people  are  either 
shockingly  original  or  care  to  be  thought  so, 
and  what  happens  to  those  who  are  is  a  lesson 
to  the  rest  of  us.  Moreover  the  habits  and 
customs  we  follow  are,  in  the  main,  of  untold 
antiquity.  Just  as  they  are  not  only  not  our 


72    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

own,  but  other  people's,  they  are  not  simply 
of  our  time,  but  of  all  the  past.  They  are  the 
largest  records  of  human  history.  Their  vital- 
ity does  not  depend  upon  consciousness; 
habits  are  stronger  than  thought.  They  ex- 
emplify a  sort  of  perpetual  motion.  Once 
started  they  can  keep  going,  until  interrupted 
by  others,  long  after  their  original  impulse  is 
lost,  because  each  generation  which  repeats 
them, furnishes  a  further  impulse  toward  their 
perpetuation. 

„    Now,  since  habit  is  largely  the  persistence 
of  the  primitive,  and  the  primitive  was  and  is 
so  largely  religious,  the  religious  habits  and 
customs  of  to-day  have  a  strength  which  it  is 
impossible  to  measure.   As  a  matter  of  fact, N 
religion  is  so  much  a  thing  of  habit  that  it  / 
has  escajpedj^ysisjuntinDur  ownlime,  and  > 
has"freen  taken  for  granted  as  an  essential  V 
elemenf7n~soclety.  There  was  no  problem  of  j 
religion  as  sucETlmtil  the  eighteenth  century. 
It  hardly  exists  yet  for  the  mass  of  our  fel- 
low-citizens. We  are  apt  to  forget  this,  those 
of  us  who  get  within  the  problem.  But  most 
of  the  people  with  whom  we  live  take  religion 
as  much  as  a  matter  of  course  as  they  take 
their  meals. 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          73 

How  much  of  a  vision  of  secularization 
does  one  get  from  viewing  the  capitalistic 
agents  of  the  secular  advance  seated  in  up- 
holstered pews,  the  workers  crowding  to  morn- 
ing mass,  the  forces  of  production  stilled  one 
seventh  of  the  time  at  the  behest  of  religion  ? 
Churchgoing  may  be  falling  off,  but  still,  as 
in  Goethe's  boyhood,  the  church-bell  goes  out 
into  the  fields  and  hunts  the  truants,  and  it 
gathers  them  in  wherever  its  note  of  authority 
falls  on  the  willing  ear  of  habit.  Some  escape ; 
but  the  significant  thing  is  that  even  the  in- 
different are  generally  ready  to  apologize  for 
their  indifference  and  acknowledge  their  guilt. 
Society  puts  its  brand  upon  nonconformity, 
and  demands  that  religion  at  least  shall  be 
treated  —  as  religion  ought  to  be  ! 

There  are  habits  of  thought  as  well  as  of 
action.  Thought  is  perhaps  too  limited  a 
word,  for  the  mental  processes  which  are 
dominated  by  habit  stretch  back  to  the  be- 
ginning. But  after  thought  awakens,  it  is 
mostly  busy  as  the  advocate  of  habit.  It  is 
still  the  apologist  for  most  of  what  we  do, 
rather  than  the  directing  cause.  We  feel  that 
this  or  that  is  right ;  a  subtle  intimation  guides 
us  in  our  choice.  We  call  it  conscience ;  it  is 


74    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

just  crystallized  habit.  For  our  consciences 
are  less  our  own  than  other  people's.  Con- 
science is  the  intrusion  of  society  into  our 
own  affairs.  The  inner  light  to  which  the 
Quaker  turns  as  to  the  inspiration  of  God  is 
in  reality  the  deepest  voice  of  religion,  for  it 
is  the  concentrated  essence  of  the  primitive, 
moulded  by  taboo,  tested  by  untold  centuries 
of  social  experience  and  speaking  with  the 
authority  of  the  unanalyzed.  The  mind  can 
hold  this  reflex  of  primitive  attitudes  in 
almost  unlimited  quantities.  One  can  see  its 
variations  in  people,  like  the  trembling  needle 
that  registers  the  electricity  in  the  dynamo. 
The  electricity  is  the  force  of  tradition  and 
society ;  the  conscience  is  merely  the  indicator 
of  its  presence. 

It  is  habit,  too,  which  is  the  main  element 

in  that  sort  of  sixth  sense  which  a  group  of 

obscurantist  psychologists  have  been  of  late 

trying  to  foist  upon  society,  —  that  subliminal 

or  periphery  or  whatever  it  may  be.  There  is 

I  no  more  a  religious  sense  than  an  economic  or 

i  business  sense.  The  subliminal  is  merely  the 

subconscious ;  and  the  subconscious  is  mainly 

accumulated  habit.   Although  it  is  based  on 

more  than  our  own  experience,  it  does  not 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          75 

register  more  than  the  remains  of  that  great 
experience  of  the  society,  past  as  well  as 
present,  out  of  which  we  have  sprung.  Its 
thrills  are  never,  at  their  best,  more  than  the 
perpetuation  of  habitual  reactions  acquired 
somewhere,  somehow  in  the  long  schooling  of 
humanity,  and  transmitted,  like  the  nerves  in 
which  they  reside,  from  our  ancestors.  The 
sensations  of  subliminal  religion  are  as  near 
as  we  can  get  to  an  animal's  appreciation  of 
phenomena.  The  habit  goes  back  that  far. 

Next  to  habit  in  religion,  comes  faith,  hab- 
it's more  or  less  conscious  apologist.  Habit 
itself  is  not  all  it  seems  to  be.  It  is  often  very 
misleading.  It  is  the  receptacle,  in  which  much 
of  our  religion  is  preserved,  but  one  cannot 
tell  by  looking  at  the  outside  how  much  there 
is  really  contained  within.  The  man  who  takes 
his  religion  as  he  takes  his  meals,  or  wears  it 
as  he  does  his  clothes,  may  have  very  little  of 
it  in  what  he  calls  his  heart.  Even  the  sub- 
liminal religion  of  a  perplexed  philosopher  is 
less  religious  than  he  supposes.  It  is  not  until 
these  habitual  reactions  pass  into  the  realm  of 
consciousness  and  become  faith  that  we  can 
appreciate  their  vitality.  Faith  is  the  element  of 


76    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

our  religion  upon  which  we  place  most  emphasis 
—  simply  because  it  is  the  conscious  element. 
Its  scope  is  enormous.  It  connects,  on  the  one 
hand,  with  those  dumb  attitudes  which  are 
bred  of  habit  in  the  nervous  organisms  of  ani- 
mals and  on  the  other  with  the  most  profound 
conceptions  of  the  human  intellect.  Taken 
historically  it  is  hardly  more  than  the  science 
of  habit,  the  explanation,  in  terms  of  current 
thought,  of  actions  and  attitudes,  so  fastened 
upon  us  as  to  seem  instinctive.  But  since  it 
explains  things  in  terms  of  themselves,  grants 
legitimacy  to  what  is,  apologizes  for  thrills  by 
insisting  on  the  mystery,  it  is  the  largest  agent 
of  conservatism  in  the  world,  and  the  most 
potent  source  of  religious  vitality. 

No  one  can  measure  the  extent  of  faith  in 
the  modern  world.  Few  of  us  know  how  much 
we  have  ourselves.  But  if  a  man  from  Mars 
were  to  visit  our  rational  Europe,  he  would 
undoubtedly  find,  as  the  most  remarkable 
anomaly  of  our  civilization,  as  Professor  Pratt 
has  so  graphically  depicted  it,1  our  practically 
universal  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  God 
whom  none  of  us  has  ever  seen,  in  his  justice 
in  the  face  of  the  tragedy  of  helpless  innocence 

1  Cf.  J.  B.  Pratt,  The  Psychology  of  Religious  Belief,  pp.  £-5. 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          77 

which  makes  up  the  scheme  of  evolution,  in 
his  goodness  in  spite  of  the  sufferings  of  men 
for  others'  sins,  in  his  omnipotence,  although 
the  laws  of  the  universe  seem  to  admit  of  no 
interfering  hand.  We  are  so  accustomed  to 
this  faith,  it  comprises  so  much  of  our  world- 
view,  that  we  forget  how  much  it  really  domi- 
nates our  intellects. 

Alongside  of  this  fundamental  belief,  there 
is  a  world  of  others.  Mythology  is  perhaps 
the  first  expression  of  reason.  The  child  and 
the  savage  see  things  as  a  mere  succession  of 
events.  It  is  always  "  and  then  another  thing 
happened."  Description  is  narrative;  cause 
and  result  are  the  beginning  and  end  of  a 
story.  The  mythological  faculty  is  the  basis 
of  more  in  our  philosophy  than  we  dream  of. 
It  has  drawn  what  Huxley  called  the  veil  of 
Isis  over  the  phenomena  of  this  world.  We  have 
the  same  tendency  to  believe  the  presupposi- 
tions of  the  myth  as  to  accept  the  myth  itself. 
The  critical  faculty  is  a  late  acquisition ;  be- 
lief is  much  more  natural.  There  is  everything 
in  its  favor.  It  is  social,  —  an  acquiescence  in 
what  society  declares,. —  while  criticism  is  in- 
dividual and  involves  independence,  not  sim- 
ply of  judgment  but  of  standpoint.  We  all 


78     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

tend  to  believe;  to  disbelieve  generally  de- 
mands more  effort  than  most  people  devote  to 
a  problem. 

The  strength  of  faith,  in  credulity  on  the 
one  hand  and  thoughtful  acceptance  of  creed 
on  the  other,  is  impossible  of  measurement. 
But  one  can  see  the  evidences  of  its  vitality 
outside  as  well  as  inside  orthodoxy.  Even  in 
the  heart  of  rationalism  one  can  see  the  same 
^persistence  of — let  us  call  it  —  credulity  as 
in  the  cultured  circles  of  antiquity.  Where 
Christianity  has  lost  its  appeal,  Asiatic  cults 
come  in,  as  they  did  in  pagan  Rome  when 
Christianity  was  one  of  them.  Where  -lime- 
worn  jdeals-^jLoithadoxy^^  we 
have  phenomena  like  those  of  Christian  Science. 
Buddhism  is  gaining,  so  I  am  told,  even 
among  German  university  professors !  The 
fact  that  those  who  are  at  work  in  social  ser- 
vice, even  in  the  cause  of  the  secular  advance, 
find  an  emotional  satisfaction  in  viewing  their 
work  as  religion,  apart  from  creeds  and  on  a 
purely  human  ground,  and  the  pathetic  eager- 
ness with  which  the  awakening  consciousness 
of  a  newly  educated  democracy  turns  this  way 
and  that  for  religious  leadership,  are  crowning 
tributes  to  the  hold  it  has  upon  us  in  the 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          79 

modern  world  —  even  when  we  seem  to  be 
slipping  away  from  its  immemorial  claims. 

Here  comes  the  role  of  mysticism^—  modern 
mysticism,  that  is.  It  attempts  to  be  both 
critical  and  believing.  It  sees  the  veil  of  Isis 
torn  by  science,  but  regards  the  veil  itself  as  a 
phenomenon  as  real  as  those  phenomena  which 
it  conceals.  Its  roots  are  in  the  same  tenden- 
cies as  are  in  habit  and  dogma ;  but  it  is  aware 
of  the  need  for  adjustment.  It  is  a  sort  of 
belief  in  belief  itself ;  a  criticism  which  starts 
with  acceptance  and  therefore  ends  with  it.  It 
is  the  rationalizing  of  an  unratipnal  —  though 
not  necessarily  irrational  —  tendency.  But  the 
tendency  is  older  than  consciousness,  as  deep 
as  life,  and  as  universal  as  the  tragic  history 
of  society.  ^Mysticism  is  the  orthodoxy  of 
heresies,  the  sanction  of  individual  religion  by 
the  faculties  and  the  judgments  which  have 
produced  society.^  But  being  individual,  it  is 
hard  to  estimate  —  harder  than  faith  of  the 
orthodox  type  because  it  lives  under  various 
disguises.  All  we  can  do  here  is  to  call  atten- 
tion to  its  role  in  the  perplexed  world  of  to-day, 
and  to  note  how,  through  it,  religion  invades 
thejiiost  positive  creations  of  science  and  regis- 


80    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

ters  the  limitations  of  the  intellect.  Its  field, 
moreover,  passes  the  boundaries  of  faith,  and 
includes,  rightly  or  wrongly,  the  highest  as- 
pirations of  those  moral  leaders  in  the  secular 
world,  who  see  poetry  in  justice  and  beauty  in 
the  moral  order  of  the  universe,  and  fuse  will 
and  imagination  into  the  emotional  apprehen- 
jsion  of  those  forces  which  make  for  righteous- 
ness. 

The  conclusion  is  commonplace.  ^Religion 
plays  a  part  in  modern  life  the  scope  of  which 
we  ordinarily  are  hardly  aware  of,  simply  be- 
cause it  is  so  much  a  matter  of  course.  It  still 
presides  over  the  crises  of  most  men's  lives,  as 
it  does  in  the  Australian  wilderness.  Life  may 
largely  escape  its  control  in  the  affairs  of  busi- 
ness and  demands  of  duty  or  pleasure;  but, 
in  the  face  of  death  and  in  times  of  suffering 
and  bereavement,  in  those  tragic  hours  when 
the  bewildered  emotions  beat  vainly  at  the 
blank  walls  of  thought,  religion  resumes  its 
reign  over  the  mass  of  humanity)  It  rises  shin- 
ing from  the  dust  and  dullness  of  habit  and 
gives  meaning  to  ceremonies  and  strength  to 
outworn  beliefs.  ^Superstition,  orthodoxy,  and 
mysticism  all  respond  to  life's  alarms.)  Its  help- 


DEVOLUTION  OR  EVOLUTION?          81 

lessness  is  their  strength.  Behind  all,  the  sense 
of  the  impending  doom — the  uncertainty  of 
everything  except  that  the  doom  is  sure  — 
lends  to  religion,  to  all  appearances,  the  in- 
evitability of  death  itself. 


And  yet  the  religious  revolution  is  a  fact. 
It  is  a  fact  which  does  not  rest  upon  any 
weak  assertion  of  mine.  It  is  asserted  by  the 
very  structure  of  society,  by  the  current  of  its 
thought  and  the  push  of  its  tremendous  move- 
ment, by  the  creations  of  that  scientific  spirit 
which  is  now  stretching  out  the  control  of  our 
bodies  to  conquer  the  forces  of  nature  and  of 
our  minds  to  grasp  its  hidden  problems.  And 
back  of  the  religious  revolution  lies  the  tre- 
mendous process  of  social  evolution,  of  eman- 
cipation from  superstition  and  the  awakening 
of  reason.  Society,  as  I  said  before,  is  "  carving 
out  for  itself,  from  the  realm  of  mystery  in 
which  it  lies,  a  sphere  of  unhampered  action 
and  a  field  of  independent  thought." 

What  is  the  significance  of  such  vast  con- 
tradictions and  parallels?  This  will  be  the 
subject  of  our  later  lectures. 


Ill 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA 

ON  the  basis  of  a  large  comparison  of  mod- 
ern civilization  with  Oriental,  primitive,  and 
antique,  we  risked  the  statement,  which,  if 
true,  is  one  of  the  most  tremendous  facts  in 
the  history  of  mankind  —  that  the  progress  of 
civilization  has  been  also  a  process  of  secular- 
ization. Then  we  looked  for  objections  to  this 
hypothesis,  and  saw,  even  in  a  hurried  survey 
of  the  vitality  of  modern  religious  movements, 
reasons  for  hesitancy  in  accepting  it. 

The  impressive  strength  of  these  move- 
ments and  the  apparent  inevitability  of  the 
religious  outlook  in  the  face  of  mysteries, 
persistent  and  insoluble,  seem  in  themselves 
sufficient  answer  to  the  claim  that  religion  is 
a  lessening  social  force.  And  yet,  in  the  new 
horizons  of  anthropology  and  history,  no 
clearer  perspective  stretches  out  beJffre  us 
than  that  which  leads  from  our  secular  and 
rational  civilization  to  the  magic  and  super- 
stition of  primitive  men.  The  revolutionary 
movement  of  science  in  our  own  day,  which 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    83 

no  one  questions,  takes  its  place  as  part  of  a 
long  historical  process,  and  is  apparently  as 
inevitable,  in  its  turn,  as  the  mysteries  which 
it  brushes  aside.  IFor  if  mystery  lies  in  the 
very  situation  of  life,  where  intelligence  is 
forever  facing  things  un-understood,  skepti- 
cism lies  in  the  very  nature  of  intelligence) 

But  another  objection  to  our  proposition 
remains  to  be  considered,  this  time  a  criticism 
of  method  rather  than  of  results.  Our  scheme 
of  evolution  was  the  result  of  contrast  between 
ourselves  and  the  non-European.  If  one  looks 
for  contrasts,  one  accentuates  the  points  of 
difference ;  but  what  if  we  should  look  for  re- 
semblances instead?  The  moment  we  do,  we 
find  them  almost  as  impressive  and  convincing 
as  the  differences. 

Take  the  Orient.  If  the  West  lack  its  reli- 
gious institutions,  and  has  but  little  use  for  idle 
Yogis,  sunning  themselves  on  the  steps  of  its 
busy  temples  or  by  its  broad  roads  of  com- 
merce, that  is  not  to  say  that  it  lacks  religion. 
All  that  one  can  say,  until  one  has  studied  the 
situation  deeply,  is  that  it  lacks  the  Yogis.  We 
have  given  up  the  rigidity  of  the  East,  and 
the  more  complex  and  mobile  character  of 
Western  life  reduces  religion  to  subtler  forms. 


84    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

But  the  contrast  may  be  one  of  form  rather 
than  of  content. 

Similarly,  the  savage,  who  seems  to  us  so 
dominated  by  taboo,  may  be,  and  likely  is,  much 
more  religious  to  us  than  to  himself,  —  espe- 
cially if  we  are  hunting  for  his  religion.  Taboos, 
like  civilized  etiquette,  may  stand  athwart  con- 
duct without  one  knowing  that  they  are  really 
there.  It  is  only  when  one  breaks  them,  or 
runs  upon  them  unaware,  that  one  realizes 
their  explosive  power.  The  savage,  with  less 
introspection,  is  less  conscious  of  the  religion 
in  these  mysterious  things  than  the  investiga- 
tors who  trace  the  relationships.  His  life,  nar- 
rowly limited  at  best,  fits  all  the  more  easily 
its  scheme  of  routine  and  inherited  belief.  And 
in  most  things  he  acts  about  as  we  do. 

We  meet  the  same  paradox  when  we  turn 
to  our  own  history.  There  is  another  side  to 
it  as  well  as  that  vision  of  secularization  which 
we  saw  in  it,  in  the  last  lecture.  Is  not  the 
rationalist  stretching  a  theory  to  the  limit  if 
he  makes  the  evolution  of  civilization  a  vast 
and  steady  process  of  secular  advance  and  a 
narrowing  of  the  social  sphere  of  religion, 
when  most  of  the  great  epochs  of  that  history 
show  its  power?  Christianity  itself,  for  in- 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    85 

stance,  is  probably  the  largest  single  phe- 
nomenon of  European  history.  There  is  little 
spectacle  of  secularization  in  the  way  it  rose 
on  the  very  ruins  of  antiquity  to  furnish  guid- 
ance and  ideals  for  the  youth  of  this  civiliza- 
tion of  to-day.  It  assumed  control  of  barbarian 
states,  and,  in  the  long  upward  struggle  of  suc- 
ceeding centuries,  its  organization  was  the  one 
common  embodiment  of  social  gain,  the  asy- 
lum for  learning  and  the  museum  for  art.  The 
moral  empire  of  the  mediaeval  Church  has  no 
parallel  in  history,  with  its  undisputed  sway 
over  the  minds  and  consciences  of  men,  with  its 
priesthood  "  panoplied  with  inviolability  "  and 
armed  with  the  powers  of  eternal  life  and  death 
in  sacrament  and  excommunication.  Reli- 
gion is  no  dead  thing  inside  the  structure  of  a 
church,  whose  very  persistence  rests  upon  the 
unbroken  habits  and  continued  faith  of  hu- 
manity. Without  that  faith,  shared  by  society 
at  large,  excommunication  would  lose  its  ter- 
rors, inquisitions  and  censorships  be  unheeded, 
sacrament  and  priestly  control  be  impossible. 
And  time  after  time  that  vitality  has  shown 
itself.  Reformations  and  religious  revivals 
mark  some  of  the  largest  epochs  of  Europe, 
and  from  them  radiate  influences  of  incalcu- 


86    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

lable  scope.  Think  of  the  movements  they  in- 
augurated :  monks  of  Cluny  starting  a  reform 
that  swept  the  Papacy  from  the  control  of  fac- 
tions of  murderous  Koman  nobles  to  the  head- 
ship of  a  regenerated  Church  and  a  power 
more  imperial  than  that  of  the  Empire ;  re- 
cluses of  Clairvaux  drawing  the  ideals  of  an 
iron  age  to  thoughts  of  peace  or  bursting  forth 
with  the  message  of  crusade ;  Franciscans  and 
Dominicans  penetrating  the  first  slums  of  the 
new  commercial  cities,  and  defying  the  sordid 
march  of  wealth  with  the  poetic  dream  of  apos- 
tolic poverty;  Lutherans  and  Calvinists  fur- 
nishing the  moral  courage  to  the  individual 
for  the  attainment  of  a  Christian  liberty  — 
under  theological  tutelage ;  Puritans  whose 
sober  common  sense  transplanted  that  idea  of 
liberty  into  the  secular  world,  —  but  whose 
stern  and  rigid  faith  remained,  like  the  shadow 
of  a  great  cathedral,  darkening  the  bright  city 
of  the  world  they  scorned  but  fought  for ;  the 
molten  enthusiasm  of  modern  evangelicalism 
gathering  its  force  in  movements  like  that  of 
Methodism  which  swept  the  secular  compla- 
cency of  the  eighteenth  century  in  England 
like  a  river  of  fire.  These  things  stand  out  on 
the  path  of  European  history,  and  no  inter- 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    3    ^7 

pretation  in  terms  of  economics  or  stressing 
of  other  perspectives  can  get  rid  of  them. 
They  reveal  the  vital  impulses  of  men ;  and 
no  one  knows  how  much  of  such  dormant 
energy  there  is  among  us  to-day. 

The  history  of  Europe  seems  little  enough 
like  a  chronicle  of  secularization  when  one 
looks  over  the  achievements  of  Christianity. 
The  sama  iajfcrue  of  its  neighbor  and  rival 
Islam.  Its  history  is  even  more  to  the  point; 
for  whereas  Christianity  was  slow  to  win  rec- 
ognition and  took  four  centuries  to  achieve 
the  mastery  of  the  Eoman  state,  Mohammed- 
anism came  like  a  thing  inspired,  a  veritable 
breath  of  God,  and  in  a  single  lifetime  gal- 
vanized the  unsuspected  forces  of  Arabia, 
which  had  lain  there  for  untold  ages,  into  a 
power  for  world-conquest,  —  a  power  that  is 
still  conquering. 

Both  history  and  anthropology  seem  to 
contradict  themselves.  Looking  one  way  down 
the  perspectives  of  social  evolution  we  see  the 
narrowing  sphere  of  religion;  looking  an- 
other way  we  see  its  persistent  and  potent 
interference.  And  the  Orient  and  savagery 
reveal  similarities  apparently  as  convincing  as 


88    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

their  contrasts.  That  contrast  between  primi- 
tive societies  dominated  by  religion  and  a 
modern  civilization  characterized  by  secular 
ideals  and  activities,  which  underlies  our  main 
hypothesis,  seems  to  be  growing  more  and 
more  obscure.  Some  of  us  must  have  already 
confirmed  our  intuitive  suspicion  that  it  is 
both  superficial  and  misleading.  Similarities 
do  not  at  first  attract  attention  like  differences, 
but  when  once  we  are  aware  of  them  they 
seem  more  fundamental.  The  traveler  is  first 
struck  with  the  external  differences  in  custom 
and  speech  which  give  a  tone  to  the  countries 
he  visits;  but  after  long  residence  he  dis- 
cerns how  under  these  outer  marks  of  so 
varied  impression  are  concealed  the  aspira- 
tions and  outlook  of  a  common  humanity. 
So  he  comes  later  to  ignore  the  differences 
as  at  first  he  ignored  the  similarities.  The  one 
may  be  as  much  exaggeration  as  the  other; 
but  he  feels,  with  much  justice,  that  of  the 
two,  the  recognition  of  the  identities  rests 
generally  on  the  deeper  knowledge. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  these  objections  leave  ' 
our  proposition  quite  untouched.  It  goes  with- 
out saying  that  there  is  an  essential  likeness 
in  all  societies.  But  one  cannot  get  rid  of  the 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    89 

comparative  and  historical  survey  by  merely 
hiding  it  behind  an  accumulated  mass  of  simi- 
larities. Contrasts  are  not  less  significant  than 
likenesses;  indeed  their  detection  forms  the 
first  step  in  criticism,  enabling  us  to  classify 
our  distinctions  in  categories  of  knowledge. 
The  only  problem,  after  all,  is  to  distinguish 
the  apparent  from  the  real.  The  scientific  mind 
recognizes  that  the  very  contrasts  of  phe- 
nomena arise  out  of  a  common  base,  otherwise 
the  phenomena  would  not  admit  of  compari- 
son ;  but  it  moves  to  the  unifying  synthesis 
through  an  analysis  of  distinguishable  data. 
Thus  Darwin  developed  the  essential  unity  of 
life  by  a  study  of  the  variations  of  species. 

If,  however,  we  accept  the  contention  which 
we  have  just  been  considering,  that  religion 
occupies  a  practically  constant  place  in  varying 
cultures,  it  argues  for,  rather  than  against  our 
hypothesis.  l\Ve  have  not  maintained  that  re- 
ligion is  growing  less,  but  that  it  is  less  in 
relation  to  other  things.'  The  difference  is  in 
them  rather  than  in  it.  Religion  is  our  heri- 
tage; art  and  science  are  our  achievements.) 
Grant  that  the  religious  heritage  has  changed, 
that  we  have  remade  it  and  pass  it  on  improved 
and  purified,  it  still  reflects  attitudes  older .than 


90    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

all  civilization.  The  essential  difference  be- 
tween ourselves  and  the  un-modern  world  lies 
less  in  it  than  in  those  creations  of  the  human 
intellect  which  are  distinctly  ours,  those  which 
make  for  knowledge  and  power.  Civilization 
connotes  property,  intelligence,  emancipation 
—  social  and  individual  —  and  rational  con- 
trol. In  these  things  of  the  secular  spirit  lies 
the  vital  contrast  with  the  uncivilized,  and  not 
in  a  constant  factor  like  religion,  except  in  so 
far  as  it  changes  to  fit  the  new  environment. 
When  we  attempt,  however,  to  reduce  our 
hypothesis  to  more  definite  terms,  we  see  why 
so  varying  opinions  exist  concerning  it.  For 
no  careful,  detailed  examination  of  the  data 
has  yet  been  made.  So  far  we  have  been  merely 
amusing  ourselves  with  impressions,  and  such 
impressionistic  glimpses  as  have  been  given 
throw  but  little  light  upon  any  solution.  In 
the  vast  horizons  of  both  East  and  West,  it 
is  possible  to  arrange  contrasts  and  similarities 
much  as  one  wishes,  just  as  history  so  easily, 
and  perhaps  inevitably,  responds  to  the  bent 
of  the  historian,  because  it  contains  enough 
varied  material  to  suit  many  different  perspec- 
tives. In  the  wealth  of  detail  of  either  past  or 
present  one  may  find  material  to  prove  almost 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    91 

any  theory.  We  must  get  down  to  more  rigid 
methods. 

But  now  we  come  to  the  crux  of  the  situ- 
ation :  the  scientific  apparatus  for  its  solution 
is  lacking.  There  has  been  no  serious  attempt 

—  in  any  large  way  —  to  face  the  problem. 
The  group  of  religious  sciences,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  that  of  social  sciences,  on  the  other, 
seldom  have  any  real   inter-relations.    The 
reason  for  this  is  clear.    The  social  sciences 
are  intruders,  or  at  best  prosperous  rivals, 
cultivating  soil  which  once  could  have  pro- 
duced theologies.   So  while  the  old  dogmatic 
studies  have  resented  their  intrusion,  and  now 
and  again  burned  their  treatises  in  the  market- 
place, the  new  sciences  on  their  part  have 
mainly  been  glad  to  leave  religion   as  much 
alone  as  they  could,  and  so  fasten  their  eyes 
upon  the  new  structure  of  which  they  are  the 
architects  and  guardians,  rather  than  upon 
that  which  they  have  left.  The  only  serious 
attention  which  the  problem  —  or  hypothesis 

—  of  secularization  has  aroused  is  on  the  part 
of  religion.  But  apart  from  sporadic  efforts 
of   individual  workers,    gathering   statistical 
data,  little  has  been  done  that  is  not  openly 
apologetic.   This  is  perhaps  inevitable.   But 


92    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

the  blindness  of  the  social  sciences  —  for 
which  they  are  hardly  to  blame  historically — 
is  no  credit  to  them  now,  and  the  greatest 
single  impediment  to  a  proper  understanding 
of  that  society  with  whose  impulses  and  habits 
they  attempt  to  deal.  The  weakness  lies  in 
their  unhistorical  and  unpsychological  habit 
of  mind.  I  Bred  in  the  air  of  the  national  state, 
and  intent  upon  problems  of  secular  control, 
they  have  failed  to  see  how  the  monarchies 
for  which  they  work,  the  liberties  which  they 
expound,  the  propriety  which  they  safeguard, 
the  homes  they  protect,  the  morals  whose 
sanctions  they  invoke,  the  justice  whose  ideals 
lead  them  on,  are  derived  from  or  rooted  in 
religion,  and  in  some  cases  wear  still  the 
shackles  of  irrational  taboos  even  in  the  heart 
of  critical  skepticism.'  The  social  sciences  have 
left  religion  to  theology.  They  might  as  well 
leave  finance  to  bankers  or  war  to  soldiers, 
To  be  sure,  their  silence  has  been,  and  possi- 
bly still  is,  a  discreet  one,  a  tacit  recognition 
of  the  power  of  religion  rather  than  a  failure 
to  recognize  its  strength.  Its  anathemas  still 
reach  into  laboratory  and  library,  and  the 
secular  sciences  need  not  invite  more  troubles 
than  they  have  at  present.  But  the  result  has 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    93 

been  to  leave  the  largest  factor  in  social  evo- 
lution almost  unnoticed  by  the  sciences  which 
are  supposed  to  analyze  society. 

This  will  be  the  case  until  social  psychology 
is  admitted  alongside  economics  and  history. 
The  objection  may  very  well  be  raised  that 
social  psychology  has  to  come  into  existence 
before  it  can  attain  recognition.  But  it  can- 
not get  beyond  a  few  rude  principles  until  it 
enters  the  fellowship  of  the  social  group ;  and 
sociology  will  remain  weak  and  unrespected 
until  it  feeds  its  young  psychological  ally  with 
statistics  and  clothes  it  liberally  with  the  varied 
garments  of  phenomena.  Until  psychology 
enters  the  social  laboratory,  not  simply  as  a 
chance  visitor,  but  as  a  worker  with  chair  and 
deskroom,  we  shall  be  groping  over  our  most 
fundamental  problems,  and  our  syntheses  of 
social  movements  —  past  or  present  —  will 
continue  to  be  the  guesses  they  have  been. 
They  will  continue  to  be  mere  guesses  at  best 
for  a  long  time  to  come,  but  it  is  something 
to  appreciate  the  importance  of  the  other  ele- 
ment in  a  guess,  the  part  that  does  not  hap- 
pen! The  potential  is  a  fact  as  well  as  the 
actual.  It  appears  in  actualities  to  some  degree, 
in  limitations  upon  impulse,  thought,  or  action, 


94    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

and  in  interference  of  scope  or  direction.  But 
if  what  does  happen  baffles  measurement  in 
our  complex  society,  even  with  the  best  of 
instruments  at  our  disposal,  how  are  we  to 
measure  what  does  not  happen?  Yet  some- 
thing must  be  done  with  it,  or  we  do  not 
really  know  what  actually  takes  place !  In- 
deed, one  might  claim  that  to  neglect  poten- 
tialities is  to  neglect  the  largest  element  in  life, 
since  after  all  so  little  happens  compared  with 
the  forces  which  are  at  work  to  produce  the 
result. 

It  is  mainly  in  this  region  that  our  problem 
falls.  No  one  knows  what  crises  or  opportu- 
nity will  bring  out  of  one,  nor  what  latent 
depths  of  primeval  stuff  one  covers  with  the 
mask  of  conformity.  (Still  less  can  society 
gauge  its  capacities  or  limitations.  Circum- 
stance seems  to  stand  athwart  history  like  old 
Fortuna,  a  goddess  of  a  wayward  bent,  and 
more  or  less  a  cousin  of  the  Fates.  The  social 
sciences  are  never  sure  of  her  caprice\\  She 
finds  as  much  capacity  for  Metternich  reac- 
tions as  for  French  Revolutions,  for  clerical 
obscurantism  as  for  the  doctrine  of  the  Rights 
of  Man.  No  one  knows  how  the  most  indiffer- 
ent and  blase  societies  may  yield  before  a  new 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA         95 

Wesley  or  Savonarola.  In  the  midst  of  the 
era  of  Darwin  and  physical  science,  when  the 
intellect  had  seemed  to  justify  itself  by  the  most 
triumphant  of  its  creations,  come  the  onslaught 
of  Bergsonian  anti-rationalism  and  the  mys- 
ticism of  James,  and  the  philosophic  schools 
flock  to  them,  as  they  used  to  pitch  their  tents 
around  Abelard  on  the  slopes  of  Mont-Sainte- 
Genevieve. 

Some  potentialities  can  be  measured  by  ex- 
periment, as  steam  in  the  steam  engine.  ( But 
the  experiments  of  society  can  never  be  ex- 
actly repeated,  since  new  factors  enter  into 
them  every  moment J  Yet  we  can  arrive  at  a 
fair  theory  of  probabilities  if  we  have  long 
observation  and  careful  registering  of  phe- 
nomena ;  and  if  social  psychology  can  achieve 
instruments  for  accurate  measurement  of  re- 
sponses to  stimuli,  it,  too,  may  some  day  be- 
come a  science.  So  far  the  science  of  statistics 
has  not  ventured  into  the  realm  of  taboo,  but 
huddles  up  timidly  and  diffidently  beside  the 
science  of  economics.  Until  there  is  a  statisti- 
cal measurement  of  religious  phenomena,  ex- 
tending over  a  long  enough  period  of  history 
to  enable  the  anomalous  to  be  disposed  of  and 
the  normal  past  to  be  compared  with  the  nor- 


96    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

mal  present,  we  shall  not  be  able  to  establish 
with  certainty  the  interpretations  of  the  prob- 
lem before  us.  For  actual  changes  are  almost 
as  hard  to  gauge  as  unrealized  potentialities. 
Change  does  not  take  place  in  the  full  light 
of  consciousness.  It  takes  place  in  two  stages 
of  consciousness,  the  past  and  the  present; 
and  by  the  time  we  have  changed  we  cease  to 
realize  what  we  were.  Changes  in  feeling  are 
especially  intangible ;  feeling  generally  comes 
and  slips  away  unnoticed.  Who  of  us  can  say 
just  when  we  cease  to  mourn  in  bereavements 
or  to  respond  to  the  myths  of  childhood  ? 
The  emotions  pass  and  blend  like  tones  of 
music,  but  no  one  knows  just  when  their 
echoes  die. 


Now  it  has  been  clear  from  the  start  that 
everything  depends  upon  what  we  mean  by 
religion.  And  few  of  us  know.  We  seldom 
face  the  subject  as  a  whole.  We  limit  our- 
selves to  our  own  variety,  and  mark  it  off  by 
arbitrary  barriers,  calling  some  forms  magic, 
others  superstition,  and  placing  mythology 
and  folk-lore  partly  outside,  partly  within.  !/In 
this  way  religion  as  a  whole  eludes  defini- 
tion. Indeed,  many  scientific  investigators, 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    97 

following  the  example  of  William  James,  are 
now  inclined  to  give  up  defining  it  altogether. 
For  this  man's  religion  is  not  that  man's,  nor 
th|t  age's  the  religion  of  this ;  yet  the  one 
jis  just  as  genuine  as  the  other.  No 
lition  can  be  at  the  same  time  all- 
>sive  and  fit  all  the  varieties.  Be- 
rne could  find  such  a  definition  it 
be  quite  useless ;  for,  including  every- 
thing, it  would  lend  significance  to  nothing  in 
particular.  What  we  want  is  not  a  statement 
of  every  element  which  every  one  wants  in- 
cluded in  religion,  but  a  sorting-out  of  the 
elements  to  see  if  there  are  any  in  common, 
any  which  therefore  seem  fundamental  in 
the  whole  complex.  Those  common  elements 
never  make  up  the  whole  of  any  one  variety  of 
religion,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case.  But  in 
them,  if  one  should  be  able  to  find  them,  one 
has  a  clue  to  the  evolution  of  the  whole  group. 
This  process  seems  simple.  Yet  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  follow  as  one  might  suppose,  for  our 
habits  of  thought  are  all  set  another  way. 
There  are  two  possible  ways  of  looking  at 
religion,  —  one  historical,  the  other  we  may 
call  contemporary.  The  historical  is  a  view 
of  it  as  a  process,  begun  in  the  dawn  of 


98    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

society  and  still  under  way ;  the  unhistorical 
is  based  upon  what  goes  under  the  name  of 
religion  to-day  or  at  any  given  time.  The  one 
is  dynamic,  the  other  static.  The  historical 
reaches  back  along  the  line  of  evolution ; 
while  the  unhistorical  reaches  out  into  the 
world  of  everyday.  The  historical  view  must 
include  the  essentials  in  the  religion  of  an 
African  savage,  a  Hindoo  Brahman,  or  a 
Christian ;  the  contemporary  need  concern 
itself  only  with  the  particular  one  of  these 
which  we  happen  to  be.  It  is  obvious,  there- 
fore, that  when  we  speak  of  a  displacement 
of  religion  in  society,  we  are  referring  to 
the  historical  conception  and  not  to  the  con- 
temporary, for  only  the  historical  has  an 
evolution.  I  Yet  the  contemporary,  lacking  the 
limitations  of  history,  is  likely  to  seem  the 
universal  and  absolute,  and  we  shall  have  to 
be  constantly  upon  our  guard  against  it,  es- 
pecially since  it  corresponds  more  definitely 
with  our  experience) 

A  moment's  thought  upon  the  subject 
shows  that  these  two  cannot  be  the  same, 
since  evolution  means  change  and  therefore 
implies  that  each  contemporary  religion  •  dif- 
fers in  some  way  from  each  past.  Yet  we 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA    99 

never  seem  to  give  it  that  moment's  thought. 
We  are  so  thoroughly  unhistorical  in  our  hab- 
its of  mind  that  it  never  occurs  to  us  to  con- 
ceive religion  as  a  process,  any  more  than  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  as  a  flux. 
Yet  if  we  could  apply  enough  imagination  to 
our  constitutional  law,  we  might  even  see  that 
stately  embodiment  of  our  national  aspiration 
moving  with  the  potent  forces  of  the  people's 
will.  Through  crisis  and  amendment  it  broad- 
ens out,  clumsily  adapting  itself  to  circum- 
stance. For  it,  like  every  other  institution  of 
society,  is  not-a-thTng"eg:istinffT)y  itself,  but  a 
living  organism,  shariiig^the  life  of  the  socTety 
whose  aims  it  embodies.^  So  with  religion. 
Viewed  ^Historically,  it  is  not  merely  a  series  of 
contemporary  religions,  but  an  embodiment  of 
continuous  if  changing  elements.  It  changes 
with  them,  but  is  more  than  any  one  phase. 
It  penetrates  varying  forms  as  the  life  of  the 
nation  does  the  Constitution.  In  short,  history 
is  more  than  a  register  of  separate  series,  a 
putting -together  of  successive  but  disasso- 
ciated facts.  Our  problem,  in  dealing  with  the 
history  of  religion,  is  therefore  one  in  dynam- 
ics, a  weighing  of  moving  forces,  not  a  meas- 
urement of  data  at  rest. 


100    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

Keligion  in  the  historical  sense  is  not  any 
one  religion  of  any  one  time,  but  the  element 
which  is  constant  throughout  the  whole  pro- 
cess. Of  course,  as  we  said  above,  that  leaves 
it  less  than  any  one  religion.  The  common 
denominator  gives  no  clue  to  the  number 
or  size  of  the  things  it  may  enter  into.  For 
instance,  to  go  back  to  our  old  arithmetics,  2 
is  the  common  denominator  of  6  and  10  and 
26,  but  it  furnishes  no  suggestion  of  the  other 
factors,  3, 5,  or  13.  In  terms  of  this  figure  of 
speech,  the  modern  religions  might  be  said  to 
be  composed  of  a  vast  number  of  thirteens,  the 
antique  a  great  number  of  fives,  and  even  the 
primitive  to  have  quite  an  assortment  of  threes. 
The  common  denominator  is  less  than  all  the 
other  factors.  So,  the  common  element  in  re- 
ligion is  perhaps  less  in  evidence  in  some  reli- 
gions than  many  other  elements  peculiar  to 
them. 

Now,  what  is  the  value  of  a  common  denomi- 
nator —  or  definition — in  terms  so  low  ?  There 
would  be  little,  indeed,  if  our  problem  were 
really  one  in  mathematics.  But  we  have  been 
pushing  our  figure  too  far.  For  the  data  with 
which  we  have  to  deal  are  those  of  life,  where 
analyses  of  mathematics  do  not  hold.  The  data 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   101 

of  life  do  not  arrange  themselves  like  integers 
alongside  one  another.  They  fuse  and  blend. 
The  elements  of  religion,  as  I  said  before,  are 
in  constant  flux,  and  a  common  denominator 
is  therefore  something  which  penetrates  all. 
It  is  not  merely  a  recurring  integer,  to  be  de- 
tected in  any  multiple,  but  a  fundamental  ele- 
ment which  gives  consistency  and  meaning  to 
the  whole.  It  is  what  has  persisted  through  a 
process  of  change  where  everything  else  is 
eliminated.  And  it  has  persisted  because  it  is 
the  essential  in  the  process.  So,  in  spite  of  its 
inadequacy  as  a  description  of  any  one  reli- 
gion, this  constant  element  —  the  histpricaL_ 
definition  —  really  offers  us  a  clue  to  the  un- 
derstanding of  the  entire  field. 

Fortunately  students  are  agreed  upon  the 
elements  that  are  constant ;  they  are,  in  the 
last  analysis,  two,  emotion  and  n^steryi.  Re- 
ligion, in  the  most  general  terms,  is  the  reac-j 
tion  of  mankind  to  something  apprehended/ 
but  not  comprehended.  It  involves  two  dis-\ 
tinct  elements :  the  object  which  stimulates, 
and  the  psychic  life  which  responds.  The  re- 
sponse in  its  keenest  form  is  fear.  The  ancients 
made  no  more  profound  discovery  than  that 
"  fear  created  the  gods/'  But  the  religious  re- 


102    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

action  is  more  than  simple  fear.  It  is  rather  the 
sense  of  acceptance  than  that  of  escape  which  is 
uppermost.  Almost  every  definition  of  religion 
—  and  there  are  as  many  as  there  have  been 
students  of  it  —  insists  upon  this  element  of 
acceptance.  The  essential  religious  emotion  is 
reverence,  which  is  a  compound  of  fear  and 
appreciation.  The  word  itself  reflects  this 
double  attitude.  It  has  lost  the  sense  of  dread 
in  its  root  "  vereor."  It  had  already  lost  it  in 
Latin,  perhaps  because  the  sense  of  dread 
does  not  readily  last  over  into  nouns,  but  tends 
to  work  itself  off  in  a  verb.  In  "  reverentia  " 
a  new  and  softer  note  intervenes,  for  which  we 
have  invented  a  verb  "  revere."  Blank  fear  is 
gone,  and  we  are  treasuring  the  thrills  instead, 
in  a  tangle  of  emotions.  There  is  a  feeling 
toward  the  mystery  rather  than  away  from  it, 
an  attempt  to  appropriate  all  the  emotional 
stimuli  it  can  impart,  to  absorb  its  mystic 
power,  —  in  short,  to  "  worship  "  it.  ^Religion, 
then,  from  savage  to  civilized,  has  this  in 
common,  that  it  is,  on  the  one  hand,  the  state 
of  feeling  awakened  in  a  man  by  the  sense, 
in  and  around  him,  of  mysteries,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  those 


and  thoughts   which   that    sense   produces^ 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   103 

and  which  serve  to  bring  him  into  relation 
to  them.;  These  things  are  essentials,  as.  much 
in  the  modern  world  as  in  the  origins  of  civ- 
ilization. This  is  the  statement  in  most  gen- 
eral terms  of  what  all  of  us  think  of  as  reli- 
gion. It  leaves  the  place  for  secularization 
by  its  side ;  for  it  resides  in  the  supernatural 
—  or  its  equivalent.  It  is  a  thing  of  feeling 
rising  into  faith  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  ner- 
vous reactions  on  the  other  rising  into  cult. 
It  is  also  a  social,  not  an  individual,  thing. 
Its  ceremonies  are  weighted  with  memories  of 
things  none  of  us  have  ever  known,  stamped 
with  the  mark  of  an  authority  that  lies  beyond 
the  reach  of  history,  and  solemn  with  the  wist- 
ful outlook  of  all  humanity. 

"  Mystery  "  and  "  emotion  "  —  are  these  all  ? 
Then  the  historical  definition  does  not  seem  to 
define  anything;  it  is  inadequate  to  express 
the  content  of  any  religion  known  to  us  — 
even  the  most  primitive.  "  Mystery  "  is  a  weak 
word  to  characterize  the  object  of  worship  in 
any  stage  of  society.  Why  not  say  "God"  or 
"  gods  "  ?  With  us,  certainly,  the  final  test  for 
religion  has  been,  throughout  the  ages,  the 
belief  in  God;  and  anthropology  supplements 
the  evidence  of  history.  From  fetishes  and 


104    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

/  ghosts  to  the  high  divinities  of  paganism,  the 
I  world  of  mystery  is  peopled  with  supernatural 
beings,  —  whose  worship  is  religion.  Indeed, 
so  general  is  this  belief  throughout  the  world 
that  many  students  of  comparative  religion 
have  made  it,  in  one  form  or  another,  the  test 
for  all  religions,  accepting  as  satisfactory  the 
definition  of  E.  B.  Tylor,  the  pioneer  anthro- 
',  pologist  in  this  field,  that  the  essence  of  re- 
ligion is  "a  belief  in  spiritual  beings."  Tylor 
showed,  by  a  vast  survey  of  savage  customs 
and  beliefs,  how  the  primitive  mind  "  animizes  " 
the  phenomena  of  nature ;  sees  spirits  and 
spooks  on  every  hand  ;  imagines  life  in  things 
that  move,  elusive  spirits  in  things  that  startle, 
ghosts  in  the  dark  on  windy  nights,  fairies  in 
the  wood,  eerie  presences  in  caves,  rocks,  rivers, 
etc.  These  animistic  forces  form,  so  Tylor 
claimed,  the  background  of  religion.  As  so- 
ciety advances  it  clarifies  and  modifies  these 
primitive  conceptions ;  the  gods  change  with 
changes  in  culture ;  ultimately  one  god  re- 
places many.  Yet  throughout  the  whole  pro- 
cess of  evolution,  some  conception  of  divinity 
seems  constant. 

But  recent  study  has  opened  up  strata  more 
profound  than  these,  at  the  very  foundations 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   105 

of  religion.  Deeper  than  gods  or  demons  lies 
the  power  in  the  uncanny  itself.  Just  as  the 
ideas  of  spirits,  gods,  and  demons  clarify  them- 
selves with  developing  civilization  from  my- 
thology to  theology,  so  the  farther  back  we  go 
the  less  clear  they  are,  until,  at  the  savage 
end  of  the  process,  they  sink  into  a  confused 
mass  in  which  the  sense  of  individuality  tends 
to  disappear.  At  our  civilized  end  of  the  pro- 
cess the  intellect  embodies  its  religious  faith 
in  the  conception  of  God ;  in  the  world  of  the 
primitive,  the  senses  register  the  thrills  from 
things  uncanny  merely  in  terms  of  their  un- 
canniness.  To  be  sure,  no  people  has  been 
found  where  this  sort  of  religious  protoplasm 
has  not  already  produced  its  spirits  ;  but  then 
no  really  primitive  people  exists  for  our  analy- 
sis. The  savage  at  ^his  lowest  is  fairly  well 
developed  toward  the  civilized.  But  there  is 
abundant  evidence  of  the  role  of  this  potency 
of  the  mysterious  quite  apart  from  any  idea  of 
spirits, — the  "poison"  of  the  sorcerer's  spell, 
the  power  of  the  curse  or  blessing,  the  "  luck  " 
that  lies  in  the  uncanny,  the  "  medicine  "  of 
the  medicine  man,  which  resides  in  crystals 
and  hocus-pocus,  and  the  like.  One  may  some- 
times even  watch  the  spirits  emerging  from 


106    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

this  religious  base ;  first  as  qualities  of  it,  a 
differentiation  of  the  particular  use  or  direc- 
tion of  this  or  that  uncanniness ;  then  devel- 
oping names  from  adjectives  that  describe  to 
nouns  that  "  name  "  as  well  as  describe ;  and 
finally  receiving  genuine  worship  instead  of 
magical  ceremonies.  Such,  for  instance,  were 
those  Roman  deities  mentioned  in  the  first 
lecture,  gods  and  goddesses  of  nooks  and 
crannies  in  house  and  field,  and  of  the  dangers 
and  joys  of  the  farmer's  life.  The  numina  be- 
come divinities.  And  there  is  trace  of  such 
numina  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  savagery,  less  spirits  than  presences,  less 
presences  than  power.  The  evidence  for  this 
mysterious  potency  is  not  absolutely  universal, 
but  it  is  at  hand  from  so  much  of  the  savage 
world  as  to  indicate  its  universality.  It  has 
been  detected  among  people  in  every  quarter 
of  the  globe,  —  in  Australia,  Africa,  America, 
among  Esquimaux,  South  Sea  Islanders,  and 
Hindoos. 

We  shall  get  nowhere  in  the  problem  be- 
fore us  unless  we  can  appreciate  this  primal 
stuff.  We  must,  as  it  were,  put  our  eyes  to 
the  microscope  to  see  the  protoplasm  of  reli- 
gion, as  the  biologist  studies  the  embryology 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   107 

of  life.  And  to  do  this  we  must  learn  to 
"  think  savage."  We  must  renounce  our  civil- 
ization, get  rid,  for  a  while,  of  the  very  men- 
tal training  which  makes  our  observation  pos- 
sible. We  must  feel  rather  than  think,  or 
think  only  so  far  as  feeling  urges  us.  There 
is  no  logical  system  of  thought,  no  vast  con- 
ception of  a  primitive  philosophy  for  us  to 
learn.  We  must,  on  the  contrary,  divest  our- 
selves of  all  that  has  clarified  our  impressions 
into  reasoned  systems  of  intelligence,  and 
merge  all  our  thrills  into  one  vague  sense  of 
mysterious  power. 

Imagine  that  by  some  potent  wizardry  these 
college  walls  should  disappear  along  with  the 
arts  and  sciences  which  have  found  in  them  a 
home.  We  are  savages,  camping  by  the  whis- 
pering pine  grove  yonder,  with  our  little  patch 
of  corn  below  against  the  southern  hillside 
and  the  great  forest  belt  stretching  unbroken 
beyond  it  to  the  blue  notched  circle  of  the 
mountains.  We  go  fishing  in  the  river  in  the 
lazy  spring  days,  spearing  pike  with  our  stone- 
chopped  arrows,  and  when  not  on  the  warpath 
against  the  Iroquois  to  the  west  or  on  the  hunt 
through  the  river  jungle,  pass  our  time  in 
rather  monotonous  idleness — except,  of  course, 


108    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

for  the  work  done  by  the  women,  which  does 
not  matter. 

Now  the  missionaries  of  the  white  men  re- 
port that  we  have  a  great  spirit,  "  Manitou," 
whom  we  worship.  But  that  is  not  so.  Mani- 
tou  in  Algonkin  is  originally  an  adjective,  the 
attribute  of  mysterious  things  or  beings.  It 
later  may  develop  into  a  noun,  and  so  may 
stand  for  the  mysterious  things  or  beings 
themselves.  But  it  is  not  an  Indian  name  for 
God.  The  sizzling  stone  in  the  sweat  lodge  is 
manitou,  for  its  steaming  potency  drives  out 
rheumatism.  So  are  the  owl  that  hoots  by  the 
river-path  and  the  wolf  that  howls  from  the 
graveyard.  Above  all,  things  seen  or  heard  in 
dreams  are  manitou,  for  they  are  revelations. 
There  is  no  distinction  between  subject  and 
object ;  the  beaver  in  a  dream  reveals  some- 
thing, and  both  the  dream-beaver  and  his  re- 
velation are  manitou.  In  short,  whenever  we 
experience  a  mysterious  thrill  we  know  that 
manitou  is  there.  In  the  words  of  an  Algon- 
kin, who  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant  anthro- 
pologists America  has  produced,  William 
Jones,  "  It  is  futile  to  ask  an  Algonkin  [he  is 
speaking  of  the  central  tribes]  for  an  articu- 
late definition  of  the  substance  [of  manitou], 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   109 

partly  because  it  would  be  something  about 
which  he  does  not  concern  himself,  and  partly 
because  he  is  quite  satisfied  with  only  the  sen- 
timent of  its  existence.  He  feels  that  the  prop- 
erty is  everywhere,  is  omnipresent.  The  feel- 
ing that  it  is  omnipresent  leads  naturally  to 
the  belief  that  it  enters  into  everything  in 
nature;  and  the  notion  that  it  is  active  causes 
the  mind  to  look  everywhere  for  its  mani- 
festations." l 

!  Manitou  is  most  keenly  appreciated  at  cer- 
tain sacred  times  and  places.  Just  as  with  the 
civilized  the  thrill  comes  surest  when  the  mind 
is  in  its  most  receptive  mood.  Christians  stim- 
ulate their  sense  of  mystery  by  music,  by 
church  worship  with  its  age-long  association 
and  its  subduing  touch  of  silence.  So  with  the 
Indian.  He  has  his  meeting-house  for  worship, 
too,  where  the  manitou  is  doubly  real  because 
of  the  solemn  suggestion  of  time  and  place. 

"  The  ceremonial  lodge  is  a  holy  symbol ; 
it  means  a  place  where  one  can  enter  into 
communication  with  high  powers,  where,  with 
sacrifice  and  offering,  with  music  and  dance 
one  obtains  audience  and  can  ask  for  things 
beyond  human  control ;  it  means  a  place  where 

1  Journal  of  American  Folk-Lore^  vol.  xviii,  pp.  183-190. 


110    RELIGIOUS  [REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

one  can  forget  the  material  work  and  enjoy 
the  experience  of  that  magic  spell  which  one 
feels  is  the  sign  that  not  only  is  one  in  the 
presence  of  the  supernatural  property,  but  in 
that  of  the  beings  who  hold  it  in  high  degree. 
It  is  a  function  with  a  very  definite  purpose. 
It  is  to  invoke  the  presence  of  an  objective 
reality ;  the  objectified  ideal  may  be  animate 
or  inanimate.  And  the  effect  is  in  the  nature 
of  a  pleasing  thrill,  a  sense  of  resignation,  a 
consolation.  This  effect  is  the  proof  of  the 
presence  of  the  manitou. 

"  It  has  thus  been  observed  that  there  is  an 
unsystematic  belief  in  a  cosmic,  mysterious 
property  which  is  believed  to  be  existing 
everywhere  in  nature;  that  the  conception  of 
the  property  can  be  thought  of  as  impersonal, 
but  that  it  becomes  obscure  and  confused  when 
the  property  becomes  identified  with  objects 
in  nature ;  that  it  manifests  itself  in  various 
forms ;  and  that  its  emotional  effect  awakens 
a  sense  of  mystery ;  that  there  is  a  lively  ap- 
preciation of  its  miraculous  efficacy ;  and  that 
its  interpretation  is  not  according  to  any  reg- 
ular rule,  but  is  based  on  one's  feelings  rather 
than  on  one's  knowledge." 1 

1  Journal  of  American  Folk-Lore,  ubi  sup. 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   111 

This  is  manitou.  Now,  let  us  return  from 
our  Mohican  village  to  the  Amherst  which 
supplants  it  to-day.  We,  too,  have  our  mani- 
tou. We  call  it  "  grace."  The  word  is  almost 
as  elusive  in  its  meaning  to  us  as  its  Indian 
counterpart;  it  is  colorless  and  vague.  Al- 
though a  noun,  it  is  nearly  always  used  as  an 
attribute,  in  adjectival  connection  with  the 
divinity.  "  Grace "  by  itself  means  next  to 
nothing;  it  is  completely  subordinated  to 
the  idea  of  God.  No  one  would  ever  suspect 
from  its  obscure  place  in  modern  theology  that 
it  is  older  than  all  theologies.  It  is  only  in 
the  light  of  comparative  religion  that  one  can 
see  its  real  significance  in  religious  evolution. 
It  is  not  risking  much  now  to  hazard  the 
hypothesis  that  it  is  more  fundamental  than 
any  idea  of  spirits,  good  or  evil ;  nay,  more, 
that  it  is  apparently  the  source  from  which 
they  spring,  and  so  the  very  parent  of  our  idea 
of  God.  The  potency  of  the  mysterious  is 
the  fundamental  historical  basis  of  religion. 

This  opens  up  a  field  which  we  cannot  ex- 
plore farther  here  —  the  evolution  of  the  idea 
of  God.  The  history  of  that  evolution  is  slowly 
and  surely  being  recovered;  but  it  lies  apart 
from  the  perspectives  before  us.  For  —  to  re- 


112    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

turn  to  our  point  —  the  idea  of  deity  is  not  an 
essential,  or  rather  let  us  say  a  constant,  ele- 
ment in  religion.  Eeligion  is  wider  than  theol- 
ogies, wider  even  than  a  "  belief  in  spiritual 
beings."  It  begins  with  an  emotional  thrill, 
an  apprehension  of  things  by  way  of  feelings, 
before  the  intellect  translates  these  experiences 
of  phenomena  into  concepts.  It  therefore  be- 
gins before  the  idea  of  god  or  demon,  because 
it  begins  before  any  ideas  at  all.  It  comes  out 
of  deeps  unplumbed  by  primitive  intelligence, 
beyond  all  systems  of  thought,  where  emotion 
is  stimulated  by  a  sense  of  something  which 
is  not  understood,,  —  where  mystery  exerts  its 
potency. 

Now  this  is  not  reducing  everything  in  reli- 
gion to  nothing.  Mystery  is  no  mere  negative, 
not  even  from  tlte  standpoint  of  knowledge. 
It  is  not  the  unknown,  nor  the  unknowable, 
but  simply  the  un-understood.  It  is  the  appre- 
hended but  not  comprehended,  that  which  is 
known  by  sense,  intuition,  feeling,  or  what- 
ever you  will,  but  is  not  made  over  into  full 
and  rational  consciousness.  We  know  or  rather 
accept  its  reality,  but  we  do  not  know  of  what 
that  reality  consists.  It  is  what  the  senses 
register,  but  the  intellect  does  not  master  or 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   113 

interpret  to  itself  —  except  as  mystery.  Its 
language  is  thrill,  but  thrill  is  after  all  a  lan- 
guage, and  a  most  effective  one.  It  forces  us 
to  listen.  The  very  essence  of  mystery  is  that 
it  should  obtrude  itself  upon  us  and  compel 
our  recognition,  and  yet  elude  any  further 
revelation  of  what  it  is.  When  we  find  out 
what  it  is,  it  is  no  longer  a  mystery. 

The  thrill  from  the  mysterious  is,  therefore, 
the  first  phenomenon  of  religion.  But  it  is 
something  more.  Thrill  is  stimulation,  and  the 
emotions  that  are  awakened  are  the  nurseries 
of  thought.  The  reaction  extends  beyond  the 
stirring  of  feelings;  it  sets  going  the  motor 
forces  of  the  whole  psychic  world.  The  po- 
tency in  the  un-understood,  from  the  savage 
sense  of  danger  in  the  uncanny  to  the  Chris- 
tian experience  of  the  grace  of  God,  has  been 
the  main  generating,  creative  element  in  the 
evolution  of  thought,  as  well  as  the  awakener 
of  emotion.  It  has,  therefore,  been  the  major 
stimulus  in  both  religion  and  science. 

This  is  a  sweeping  statement,  and  I  may 
not  be  able  to  make  my  meaning  entirely  plain 
in  the  short  space  at  my  disposal.  But  this 
much  is  clear,  that  the  mystery  is  the  unap- 


114    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

propriated,  —  that  which  has  not  been  taken 
under  our  control,  nor  lost  to  sight  in  the 
commonplace.'  It  is  the  new,  the  queer,  some- 
thing out  of  the  ordinary,  something  which 
provokes  attention  and  continues  to  provoke 
it  without  going  deeper  into  consciousness.  It 
is  therefore  that  part  of  the  environment  — 
material  or  imaginary,  it  does  not  matter  — 
which  has  intruded  and  still  intrudes  itself 
upon  us  in  the  long  process  of  adjustment 
which  makes  up  the  history  of  our  psychic 
evolution  —  and  forces  the  adjustment.  Mys- 
teries are  like  the  jutting  crags  which  bar  the 
pathways  of  our  lives,  before  which  we,  as 
clumsy  travelers  on  a  perilous  quest,  find  our 
hearts  sink  and  our  nerveless  muscles  suddenly 
beyond  control ;  but  which  may,  just  as  well, 
suggest  to  a  bolder  spirit  a  higher  and  firmer 
path  with  larger  vistas  upon  the  barrier  itself. 
We  meet  our  mysteries,  then,  in  either  of 
two  attitudes  —  so  long  as  we  meet  them  at 
all.  One,  which  has  been  universally  regarded 
as  the  religious,  is  more  or  less  passive.  It  ac- 
cepts the  thrill,  interpreting  it  in  its  own  terms, 
which  are  those  of  emotion.  The  other,  the 
scientific,  questions.  Sometimes  it  denies  the 
mystery ;  finds  that  there  is  only  the  shadow 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   115 

of  an  obstacle  in  the  path  instead  of  an  obsta- 
cle itself.  Sometimes  it  accepts,  frankly  con- 
fessing that  it  cannot  understand.  Whether  it 
understands  or  not  makes  relatively  little  dif- 
ference, however,  for  science  is  to  be  recog- 
nized less  by  results  than  by  its  method  and 
aims. 

This  distinction  of  attitudes  carries  us  into 
the  heart  of  that  most  persistent  of  all  con- 
troversies in  this  most  controversial  field,  the 
warfare  between  religion  and  science.  For  the 
fundamental  thing  is  the  contrast  in  attitudes. 
Science  has  no  sure  and  positive  results  to  offer 
in  the  place  of  the  absolutes  of  religion.  Its 
proudest  achievements  are,  in  the  eyes  of  meta- 
physics, art  products,  like  the  theologies  they 
displace.  There  is  in  the  last  analysis  only  a 
degree  of  difference  between  the  apprehended 
and  the  comprehended.  Knowledge  itself  is 
mystery.  Ether  and  atoms  are  myths.  No  one 
knows  what  reason  is.  Truth  is  but  a  rela- 
tive thing,  and  scientific  laws  but  the  harmony 
of  evidence  about  phenomena.  But  whatever 
strictures  philosophy  may  pass  upon  the  con- 
clusions of  science,  as  merely  relative  and  pro- 
visional, there  is  no  clearer  fact  in  the  history 
of  thought  than  that  its  attitudes  and  methods 


116    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

have  been  at  opposite  poles  from  those  of  reli- 
gion. It  does  no  good  to  blink  the  fact,  estab- 
lished as  it  is  by  the  most  positive  proofs  of 
history  and  psychology.  Science  has  made 
headway  by  attempting  to  understand  the  un- 
understood,  which  means  attempting  to  elim- 
inate mystery  so  far  as  it  can.  Bejjgion^on 

\  the  other  hand,  has  stressed  the  mystery  and 
accepted  it  in  its  own  terms.  Sciencejs  the 

i  product  of  bold  adventure,  pushing  into  the 
realm  of  the  mysterious  to  interpret  its  phe- 
nomena in  terms  of  the  investigator ;  religion 
enters  this  same  realm  to  give  itself  up  to  the 
emotional  reactions.  Science  is  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  sense  of  control ;  religion  yields 
the  control  to  that  power  which  moves  in  the 
shudder  of  the  woods  by  night  and  the  glory 
of  the  morning  hills. 

Many  books  have  been  written  upon  the 
warfare  between  religion  and  science ;  just  as 
many  are  written  to  reconcile  the  two.  They 
are  in  the  same  shop-windows,  side  by  side. 
One  can  imagine  that  some  future  historian 
of  these  ancient  times  of  ours  —  when  we  are 
one  with  Babylon  —  may  find  in  them,  if  any 
should  survive,  precious  sources  for  the  baffled 
outlook  of  our  age.  Their  very  contradictions 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  DATA   117 

will  help  him  to  reproduce  the  confused  hori- 
zons of  this  age  of  scientific  dawn  and  reli- 
gious revolution.  But  he  will  find  little  in  them 
except  such  historic  evidence;  they  will  settle 
no  problems  for  him.  Their  futility  lies  in 
their  very  nature,  for  they  are  mainly  written 
to  discuss  results,  contrasting  or  comparing 
the  conclusions  of  science  with  those  of  the- 
ology. Dealing  with  the  conclusions  of  to- 
day, they  will  be  useless  to-morrow ;  they  will 
be  antiquarian  material  for  history,  but  solve 
no  problems  of  the  future;  for  the  data  will 
have  changed,  and  not  less  in  religion  than 
in  science. 

It  would  be  vastly  different,  however,  if 
such  works  were  to  deal  with  methods  instead 
of  with  results,  contrasting  and  comparing 
the  attitudes  of  science  with  those  of  religion. 
For  these  are  not  subject  to  revision  with 
every  change  of  data.  The  major  attitudes  of 
religion  are  emotional;  those  of  science  intel- 
lectual. There  is  intellectual  effort  in  religion, 
to  be  sure,  but  it  is  secondary  to  the  emo- 
tional. We  are  often  confused  upon  this 
point.  Simply  because  theology  deals  with 
religion  is  no  reason  for  regarding  it  as  al- 
ways religious.  Criticism  is  an  attitude  of 


118    RELIGIOUS ;  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY  ] 

science,  not  of  religion  —  religion  in  the  his- 
toric sense  at  least.  Reverent  criticism  may 
fall  within  the  realm  of  religion,  but  it  is  the 
reverence  which  makes  it  religious,  not  the 
criticism.  Religion  accepts  the  mystery,  treas- 
ures the  thrills.  Science  moves  into  the  mys- 
tery's very  heart,  and  it  recognizes  no  taboos. 
It  is  even  so  intent  upon  its  problem  of  un- 
derstanding that  it  often  fails  to  understand 
simply  on  that  account,  —  failing  to  sympa- 
thize emotionally  where  its  classifications  of 
logic  do  not  apply. 


Now  we  come  back  to  our  problem  —  the 
religious  revolution  of  to-day,  and  the  attempt 
to  appraise  it.  It  is  clear  that  the  revolution 
cannot  be  measured,  since  it  is  more  funda- 
mental than  the  results  indicate  —  momen- 
tous as  they  already  are.  There  is  more  in- 
volved than  a  conquest  of  nature  by  the 
forces  of  science;  there  is  a  new  outlook  into 
the  universe,  a  new  attitude  toward  every- 
thing. We  are  not  merely  restating  the  mys- 
tery of  life  and  matter  for  ourselves,  we  are 
restating  it  in  terms  of  change  itself,  to  meet 
the  demands  of  every  new  discovery.  Truth 


THE  PROBLEM  "AND  THE  DATA       IW 

is  no  longer  a  light  planted  in  eternal  prin- 
ciples and  shining  from  the  past  upon  our 
path,  where  our  own  shadows  cast  their  weird 
figures  on  the  dark  before  us.  We  carry  it 
ourselves;  it  moves  with  us,  and  its  horizons 
are  our  own. 

We  cannot  measure  such  an  advance,  for 
it  moves  with  all  the  potentialities  of  man- 
kind. But  we  can  indicate  its  nature  and  its 
direction.  The  more  we  examine  them,  the 
more  fundamental  the  change  appears.  It  is 
no  temporary  phase  of  human  interest,  soon 
to  be  satiated.  Knowledge  awakens  curiosity 
and  curiosity  achieves  more  knowledge.  There 
is  no  stopping-place  in  such  a  process,  for  the 
greater  the  knowledge,  the  more  it  reveals  its 
own  littleness;  and  in  its  sense  of  ignorance 
lies  the  impulse  to  still  more  knowledge. 

The  scientific  movement  —  although  still 
an  affair  of  individuals  rather  than  of  society 
as  a  whole  —  is  thus  cutting  in  on  habits  of 
mind  and  thought  that  go  back  to  the  animal 
world  —  back  to  the  origins  of  life.  It  is  a 
revolution  in  which  thought  itself  is  winning 
its  emancipation.  Mysteries  do  not  hold  back 
the  movement  of  science ;  they  invite  its  curi- 
osity and  stimulate  its  activity.  Science  ad- 


120    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

vances  with  that  high  courage  which  has 
learned,  in  the  noble  words  of  Lamartine,  to 
make  its  obstacles  its  stepping-stones. 

"  S'appuyer  sur  1'obstacle  et  s'&ancer  plus  loin." 

But  where  have  we  left  religion  ?  We  carried 
its  origins  back  to  the  nerves  of  primitive  ad- 
justment, and  made  it  a  sort  of  sentient  regis- 
ter of  the  first  long  phases  of  the  evolution 
of  the  mind.  But  is  that  all?  Is  it  only  a 
thing  of  low  intelligence,  to  be  discarded 
when  the  reason  begins  its  reign?  Is  the  revo- 
lution that  culbute  generate  which  Carlyle 
depicted  in  the  French  Revolution  ?  Or  has 
the  old  regime  anything  which  reason  will 
preserve?  These  are  some  of  the  questions 
fronting  us  in  the  next  lecture. 


IV 

THE  NEW   REGIME 

THERE  is  a  world-old,  world-wide  belief  that 
a  snake  can  charm  its  victims.  I  have  been 
warned  in  crossing  a  field,  where  rattlesnakes 
were  supposed  to  be  hidden  in  the  grass,  not 
to  stop  and  look  when  I  heard  a  rattle,  for  if 
I  once  saw  the  snake,  it  would  have  me  in  its 
power ;  I  should  be  under  its  spell  and  para- 
lyzed while  it  came  up  and  stung  me  at  its 
own  sweet  will.  Men  of  good  moral  character 
have  assured  me  that  they  have  seen  this  done, 
with  chickens,  rabbits,  and  even  children  ;  and 
they  had  only  escaped  themselves  by  carefully 
avoiding  looking  at  the  snake  if  it  was  coming 
toward  them ! 

Now  so  venerable  and  universal  a  belief  has 
something  behind  it.  There  is  some  kind  of 
"  spell "  in  the  power  of  the  snake ;  you  real- 
ize it  imaginatively  as  you  listen  to  the  old 
farmer's  story.  You  have  a  feeling  that  you 
might  very  well  find  yourself  unable  to  move 
when  suddenly  confronted  with  so  direct  and 
terrible  a  danger.  People  will  continue  to 


122    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

believe  in  the  "  spell "  of  a  snake  so  long  as 
they  are  likely  to  be  "  spellbound  "  when  they 
see  it  moving  in  the  grass.  It  is  the  property 
of  any  such  dangers  to  transfix  those  who 
witness  them.  Ghosts  may  do  this  as  well  as 
snakes.  How  generally  in  ghost  stories  the 
victim  is  "transfixed  with  horror/'  his  muscles 
rigid  or  beyond  control,  while  his  eyes  are 
riveted  in  a  hypnotic  sort  of  stare  upon  the 
gruesome  or  terrible  objects  before  him. 

Every  one  knows  how  art  has  fastened  upon 
this  principle  in  its  tragedies  and  novels.  And 
there  is  no  more  convincing  illustration  of  its 
application  than  in  the  popularity  of  the  sen- 
sational journals,  with  their  story  of  crime  in 
all  its  ghastly  detail.  There  is  a  fascination 
in  these  things  the  amount  of  which  can  al- 
most be  measured  by  statistics  as  over  against 
the  interest  in  less  gruesome  and  more  normal 
news.  Every  civilized  country  has  now  its 
yellow  press,  and  everywhere  its  circulation  is 
millions  larger  than  that  of  the  sober  journals 
which  omit  the  horrors.  Whv  ?  Because  horror 

•/ 

exerts  a  greater  attractive  force  than  reason. 
Even  the  staid  old  journals  print  what  startling 
news  they  have  with  heavier  headlines  than 
the  more  ordinary  material,  and  many  a  time 


THE  NEW  REGIME  123 

I  have  seen  a  most  well-intentioned  man  on 
his  way  home  in  the  Subway,  with  a  respect- 
able journal  under  his  arm,  looking  out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eye  at  the  grisly  columns  spread 
before  his  more  simple-minded  and  primitive 
neighbor. 

We  cannot  escape  the  fact  that  danger  ex- 
erts its  spell  upon  us,  as  it  does  upon  the  lower 
animals.  In  its  intenser  forms  it  can  transfix 
with  horror;  in  its  milder,  it  can  fascinate. 
Often  it  awakens  the  combative  instinct  which 
nerves  us  up  to  face  it ;  just  as  often  it  induces 
flight.  But  always  it  attracts  attention,  and 
attracts  it  in  proportion  to  its  extent  and  immi- 
nence. Even  if  we  turn  our  backs  and  run,  it 
follows  and  haunts  the  imagination.  The  spell 
of  the  Ancient  Mariner  is  good  on  land  or 
sea.  Every  one  knows  what  it  means  to  have 
been 

"  Like  one,  that  on  a  lonesome  road 
Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread, 
And  having  once  turned  round  walks  on 
And  turns  no  more  his  head : 
Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 
Doth  close  behind  him  tread." 

So  long  as  we  are  in  the  presence  of  danger, 
either  imaginatively  or  really,  it  absorbs  our 


124    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

attention,  to  the  obliteration  of  other  things. 
Life  seems  to  concentrate  its  nerves  and  hold 
their  diverging  impressions  to  a  single  point. 
We  are  under  a  spell. 

What  is  loosely  called  "the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  "  gathers  in  and  focuses  upon 
one  point  the  whole  sentient  apparatus  of  the 
body.  To  one  "fighting-mad"  as  to  one 
"  spellbound/'  there  is  only  one  thing  in  the 
world  —  the  thing  of  attack  or  danger.  He 
sees,  hears,  and  feels  nothing  but  it. 

None  of  us  remembers  exactly  what  we  do 
in  such  crises,  because  our  attention  is  fixed 
outside  of  ourselves.  We  act  "  instinctively  " 
rather  than  consciously.  This  being  the  case, 
we  can  get  a  better  clue  to  our  own  behavior 
at  such  times  by  watching  animals  rather  than 
men,  where  instinct  is  more  directly  at  work 
and  less  modified  by  anything  approaching 
purpose.  Take  a  dog  barking  at  the  snake,  or 
at  anything  he  scents  danger  in,  a  fluttering 
shadow  even.  It  arouses  and  holds  his  atten- 
tion, and  holds  it  just  as  it  does  ours;  and 
like  ours  it  is  keenest  under  such  circum- 
stances. The  greater  the  fear,  the  more  intense 
the  attention.  So  long  as  the  danger  is  immi- 
nent and  moves  in  upon  him,  his  whole  being 


THE  NEW  REGIME  125 

responds,  in  a  fever  of  excitement ;  his  hair 
bristles,  his  body  is  in  a  quiver  of  animation, 
muscles  tense,  and  every  sense  on  the  qui  vive. 

Now  let  us  attempt  a  rough,  psychological 
analysis  of  what,  to  all  appearances,  happens 
in  such  cases.  At  the  climax  of  excitement 
one  may  detect  two  main  reactions,  a  recoil 
and  a  return.  If  the  danger  is  too  dangerous, 
the  dog  merely  recoils  and  does  not  come 
back  at  it ;  whines  away,  beaten  in  spirit,  to 
hide  in  safety.  But  where  there  is  a  chance 
of  fight  or  the  vital  impulse  is  strong,  the 
thing  of  fear  draws  the  dog  back  to  it.  He 
stops  his  recoil  and  plunges  back  to  regain 
his  ground.  Combativeness  shows  itself  in 
such  instances  as  the  expression  of  an  exuber- 
ant life-instinct  which  has  been  stung  into 
action  by  the  crisis.  Most  healthy  animals  — 
unless  specialized  for  flight  —  respond  to  the 
note  of  danger  with  a  note  of  defiance.  It 
draws  them  back  to  face  the  thing  which 
drives  them  away.  So  we  have  a  sort  of  con- 
tradiction in  conduct  —  two  opposing  im- 
pulses forcing  backward  and  forward,  the 
sense  of  danger  and  the  vital  impulse,  what- 
ever that  may  be. 

But  there  is  a  third  possible  reaction  to  a 


126     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

crisis,  neither  running  away  from  it  nor  up 
to  it ;  just  standing  still  —  the  reaction  exem- 
plified in  our  own  experiences  with  snakes 
or  —  sometimes  —  mice.  It  begins  with  a  re- 
coil, but  the  recoil  is  held;  not  returned  upon. 
We  do  not  plunge  back  to  fight,  but  remain 
"rooted  to  the  spot,"  wnile  attention  rivets 
the  senses  to  the  object  that  has  startled 
them.  In  its  extreme  form  this  is  blank  panic, 
and  lower  in  point  of  vital  resistance  than 
flight.  It  is  the  least  thing  one  can  do.  But 
it  has  possibilities  which  flight  has  not,  for 
nine  times  out  of  ten  the  danger  is  unreal, 
and  by  standing  still  one  can  learn  it,  whereas 
we  never  know  if  we  run.  In  such  a  case,  as 
soon  as  the  panic  recedes,  we  find  ourselves 
played  upon  by  the  two  opposing  desires, 
danger  forcing  the  recoil  and  life  maintain- 
ing us  at  our  post.  When  the  panic  does  not 
supervene,  or  is  obliterated,  there  is  recovery 
in  mid-motion,  the  vital  forces  holding  us  up 
to  front  the  uncanny  movements  in  the  grass 
or  the  shadow  in  the  moonlight.  Still  thrill- 
ing, we  stand,  with  caught  breath,  uncertain 
what  to  do  —  and  do  aothing  but  look  and 
listen. 

What  is  the  relation  of  all  this  to  the  his- 


THE  NEW  REGIME  127 

tory  of  religion,  and  especially  to  the  history 
of  the  religious  revolution  ?  It  is  fundamen- 
tal. For  in  such  crises,  where  the  psychic  life 
shows  itself,  as  it  were,  in  the  open,  we  can 
see  the  bases  of  two  major  attitudes  of  the 
human  mind,  the  fear,  awe,  and  reverence 
which  make  for  religion,  and  the  curiosity 
which  makes  for  science.  This  opens  up  too 
vast  a  subject  for  satisfactory  treatment  in 
this  lecture ;  but  I  may  indicate,  in  a  word, 
its  main  lines  and  their  significance. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  review  our  illustra- 
tion as  a  whole.  If  we  have  been  in  the  pre- 
sence of  danger  —  not  too  dangerous  —  and 
yet  escaped,  we  enjoy  the  experience,  if  we 
are  healthy  beings.  We  sometimes  refer  to 
this  as  a  love  of  danger ;  but  what  we  enjoy 
is,  of  course,  not  danger  but  the  stimulation) 
which  it  gives  us.  We  enjoy  the  thrill  of 
quivering  nerves.  The  combative  instinct  is 
probably  but  a  heightened  sense  of  this,  a 
mastering  desire  for  the  extremest  form  of 
excitement.  Vital  force  gets  the  upper  hand 
and  carries  the  fighter  along  with  what  he 
calls  "  the  joy  of  battle."  One  can  see  this  in 
animals  as  well  as  in  men.  I  have  seen  a  squir- 
rel jump  back  and  forth  from  the  lower 


128    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

boughs  of  a  tree,  apparently  to  tease  a  dog, 
barking  furiously,  almost  within  reach  below, 
when  the  slightest  misleap  meant  death.  And 
the  squirrel  was  chattering  its  emotional  ex- 
plosions almost  as  loudly  as  the  dog.  Much  of 
our  play  seems  to  have  begun  in  such  leaps 
with  death ;  and  its  charm  is  largely  still  in 
the  mimicry  of  such  surprises  and  escapes. 

In  milder  forms  and  in  infinite  variety  of 
incident  and  expression,  this  same  emotional 
appreciation  of  stimulation  shows  itself  on 
through  the  developing  intelligence  of  man- 
kind. Art  has  perpetuated  some  of  its  keener 
and  finer  forms ;  and,  as  we  saw  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  lecture,  it  dominates  the  widest 
literature  of  the  present  day,  our  journalism. 

Now  this  emotional  appreciation  of  the 
stimuli,  this  treasuring  of  the  thrills  which 
sting  the  psychic  life  into  its  new  activity,  is 
the  basis  of  the  religious  attitude.  It  is  a  sort 
of  emotional  apprehension  of  the  whole  ex- 
perience of  life  when  penetrated  with  the 
keenest  stimuli.  It  is  the  total  reaction  of  the 
organism  to  the  dangers  or  crises  which 
front  it.  It  includes  the  recoil  and  the  return, 
the  startled  movement  of  alarm  and  the  fas- 
cination which  keeps  us  at  the  danger's  brink. 


THE  NEW  REGIME  129 

The  sense  of  fear  is  caught  in  mid-course  and 
played  upon  by  the  cross-currents  of  vital 
power ;  and  in  that  counter-movement,  where, 
as  it  were,  life  projects  itself  upon  the  avenues 
of  death,  or  holds  itself  alert  and  tense  before 
the  spectacle  of  things  beyond  control,  we  have 
the  origins  of  awe  and  reverence.  Fear  trans- 
forms itself  from  a  mere  alarm  for  flight  to  a 
thrill  accepted,  enjoyed,  and  sought  after. 

Now  we  turn  to  the  other  element  in  our 
problem,  the  curiosity  which  underlies  science. 
It  is  clear,  to  any  one  who  watches  a  dog  in 
the  circumstances  just  sketched,  that  curiosity 
is  already  in  evidence.  It,  too,  like  the  bases 
of  the  religious  attitude,  goes  back  to  the  realm 
of  instinct.  Some  psychologists  call  it  an  in- 
stinct in  itself ;  but,  as  exhibited  in  such  crises, 
it  seems  to  be  rather  a  part  of  the  general 
psychic  reaction  —  that  part  which  is  at  work 
when  the  vital  impulse  checks  the  recoil  and 
turns  us  back  to  see  what  it  is  all  about. 
Whether  the  vital  impulse  is  strong  enough  to 
attack  the  object  of  fear  or  only  leads  us  to 
examine,  as  in  the  case  of  the  dog  that  scratches 
and  sniffs,  we  exhibit  the  attitudes  of  curiosity 
so  long  as  attention  is  aroused  and  keen. 

We  can   carry  back,  then,  to  the  simple 


130    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

sensing  of  things  in  the  animal  world,  that 
spirit  of  inquiry  which  brings  us  the  achieve- 
ments of  modern  science ;  just  as  we  can  carry 
back  the  emotions  of  religion  to  the  elemental 
response  to  the  stimuli  of  shock.  But  note  that 
while  the  emotions  of  religion  include  the 
whole  reaction  of  the  entire  psychic  life,  — 
not  only  recoil  and  return  but  the  pleasure  in 
their  interplay,  —  the  sense  of  curiosity  is,  at 
the  origins,  but  a  small  part  of  the  operation 
as  a  whole.  Compared  with  that  reservoir  of 
thrills  which  persists  in  the  emotions  of  awe 
or  reverence,  curiosity  seems  but  a  poor  thing. 
And  yet,  when  we  look  deeply,  we  find  that  it, 
too,  has,  even  at  the  start,  the  most  tremendous 
implications.  For  it  is  the  keenest  expression 
of  that  attention  which  is  at  the  basis  of 
knowledge. 

There  is  a  familiar  conundrum  in  chemis- 
try, How  do  hydrogen  and  oxygen  unite  so 
as  to  become  water  ?  The  answer  is,  that  they 
do  not  become  water ;  they  produce  it.  For 
water  is  different  from  its  elements.  So,  it  will 
be  claimed  by  some,  in  this  experiment  in  psy- 
chology, even  if  these  emotions  of  shock  are 
the  elements  which  produce  religion,  they  are 


THE  NEW  REGIME  131 

not  religion  itself ;  any  more  than  curiosity  is 
science.  This  line  of  argument  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  some  to  deny  altogether  the  value 
of  any  such  genetic  study  of  behavior  as  we  are 
embarked  upon.  They  claim  that  just  as  we 
could  never  tell  from  hydrogen  or  oxygen 
alone  the  properties  of  H20,  or  water,  so  we 
get  no  clue  as  to  the  real  nature  of  modern 
religion  by  analyzing  it  into  its  constituents. 
The  obvious  answer  to  this  is  that  if  the 
science  of  psychology  can  get  upon  a  line  of 
analysis  as  fruitful  as  those  of  chemistry  and 
physics,  we  shall  at  least  "  know  "  its  pheno- 
mena as  well  as  we  know  anything  else. 
Whether  shock  and  thrill  become  religion  or 
produce  it,  one  thing  is  sure,  there  is  no  reli- 
gion without  their  action.  They  run  in  a  con- 
stant line  through  the  whole  series  of  religious 
phenomena,  from  the  lowest  up.  Is  this  with- 
out significance  ?  Certainly  not.  The  flaw  lies 
in  the  analogy.  We  should  compare  religion, 
not  with  gases  or  chemical  elements,  but  with 
the  phenomena  of  life.  The  biologist  will  admit 
that  the  conundrum  holds  in  his  field  as  well 
as  in  physics  —  but  will  add  at  once  that  it 
does  not  cover  the  whole  ground.  The  micro- 
scope reveals  the  process  of  growth  as  one  in 


132    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

which  new  cells  are  added  to  old,  old  give  way 
to  more  new,  and  so  on.  It  is  a  process  of 
production  and  reproduction.  Our  bodies 
change  minute  by  minute,  breath  by  breath. 
The  old  does  not  become  the  new ;  it  makes 
it,  brings  in  new  chemicals,  new  tissues,  new 
organisms.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  from  the 
standpoint  of  their  functioning  and  substance, 
the  organisms  remain  what  they  were.  For  in 
the  processes  of  vital  change  there  remains  an 
essential  sameness.  The  great  law  of  growth — 
that  law  which  is  the  baffling  puzzle  of  biology 
to-day  —  makes  the  new  like  the  old.  Onto- 
geny repeats  phylogeny.  So,  in  those  sciences 
which  deal  with  life,  it  is  not  so  misleading  as 
the  critic  thinks,  to  say  that  one  thing  becomes 
another  instead  of  making  it. 

To  be  sure,  a  knowledge  of  the  elements  of 
religion  in  savages  does  not  furnish  one  with 
a  description  of  its  potentialities  in  civilized 
society,  any  more  than  a  knowledge  of  unicel- 
lular organisms  describes  the  human  frame. 
But  after  all  it  is  through  the  unicellulars  that 
we  first  come  to  know  whatever  we  do  know 
of  the  secret  of  growth  and  the  functions  of 
the  complex  organs  of  the  multicellulars.  It 
was  the  discovery  of  bacteria  which  first  made 


THE  NEW  REGIME  133 

possible  a  scientific  treatment  of  the  body.  In 
the  same  way  the  science  of  religion  must 
apply  its  results.  And  I  venture  the  opinion, 
from  a  survey  of  the  field  to-day,  that  it  is 
destined  to  produce  as  radical  a  reconstruction 
in  the  understanding  and  treatment  of  religion 
as  took  place  in  the  science  of  medicine  when 
bacteriology  replaced  the  semi-magical  quack- 
ery of  herb-doctors  and  leeches. 

As  I  said  before,  we  are  not  dealing  with 
the  theological  problem  of  the  reality  of  God, 
but  with  the  historical  and  psychological  data 
of  how  men  react.  We  are  concerned  with 
the  attitudes  of  religion  and  science,  rather 
than  with  their  conclusions.  Now  the  attitude 
changes  with  a  change  in  knowledge ;  and 
this  fact,  which,  in  the  realm  of  metaphysics, 
is  the  pragmatic  justification  of  knowledge,  is, 
in  the  practical  realm  before  us,  the  secret  of 
the  religious  revolution.  For  what  we  have  at 
present  is  a  lessening  of  the  emotional  appre- 
ciation of  mystery  and  a  strengthening  of  the 
curiosity  which  leads  toward  science.  We  have 
seen  the  rudiments  of  both  the  emotion  and 
the  curiosity  in  the  realm  of  instinct ;  we  must 
now  trace  their  action  in  the  complex  world  of 
rational  consciousness. 


134    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

Religion,  I  repeat,  is  a  development  from 
that  sensing  of  shock  which  is  already  seen  in 
the  animal  world.  It  is  a  thing  of  crises  and 
mystery,  when  the  psychic  life  is  stirred  by 
some  major  stimuli  and  responds  in  thrill. 
Eeligion  is  born  of  that  emotional  state  which 
includes  all  of  these  things,  — the  sense  of  the 
mystery  or  the  thing  of  shock,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  the  vital  impulse  which 
goes  out  to  meet  it,  —  sympathetically.  It  is 
the  total  emotional  appreciation  of  both  stim- 
fuli  and  reactions;  and  we  may  give  it  the 
name  religion  so  soon  as  that  appreciation  is  reg- 
istered in  consciousness.  The  stimulus  comes 
in  from  without.  It  is  outside  of  the  horizon 
of  the  understood,  and  its  generic  name  is 
"mystery."  The  major  response  is  the  fear 
which  is  held  in  poise  by  the  power  of  life's 
resistance, — that  is  to  say,  fear  transmuted 
into  awe  and  reverence. 

I  have  already  said  this  several  times  over. 
But  now  let  us  follow  up  the  implications. 
There  are  two  which  follow  directly.  In  the 
first  place,  we  must  admit  the  reality  of  the  stim- 
ulus in  mystery,  and  in  the  second,  the  value 
of  it. 

The  reality  of  the  stimulus  is  proved  by  the 


THE  NEW  REGBIE  135 

reaction.  There  is  a  power  in  mystery  and 
danger  which  can  quicken  the  whole  psychic 
life.  Whatever  the  reason  may  think  of  it 
later,  the  emotions  accept  that  reality  and  act 
upon  it.  Reason  may  even  prove  that  there  is 
no  danger  and  that  the  mystery  is  a  delusion, 
but  so  long  as  the  emotions  register  a  thrill 
there  is  a  reality  —  for  them.  In  the  realm  of 
sensation,  whatever  thrills,  ^is.  Indeed  the 
thrill  may  be  heightened  instead  of  lessened 
by  the  denial  of  its  legitimacy  by  the  reason. 
Such  experiences  carry  one  into  the  very  heart 
of  mystery  itself,  —  which  from  the  stand- 
point of  reason  is  simply  the  un-understood. 
The  reality  of  the  stimulus,  then,  is  assured 
by  the  emotions ;  it  is  real  to  them  or  they 
would  not  thrill.  Upon  this  essential  fact  re- 
ligion is  based.  xT 

This  suggests  the  second  point,  that  of 
value.  The  emotions  enjoy  the  thrill  and  treas- 
ure it ;  and  that  appreciative  valuation  is  the 
basis  of  the  idea  of  the  sacred.  The  sacred  is 
the  mysterious,  whose  potency  society  has  ex- 
perienced and  stressed.  It  is  something  known 
to  the  emotions,  but  not  to  the  reason,  —  ex- 
cept as  a  phenomenon  of  emotion.  It  is  re- 
cognized by  its  power,  for  it  is  loaded  with 


136    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

the  stimulus  of  shock.  It  can  bless  or  curse, 
for  the  sacred  in  early  society  may  act  either 
way,  and  evpn  with  us  a  moment's  thought 
will  show  that  the  one  can  never  be  sure  of 
the  direction  which  tfye  mysterious  efficacy  of 
a  spell  may  take.  The  sacred  umbrella  of  the 
priestly  king  blesses  its  owner  and  is  deadly 
unlucky  to  any  other  who  touches  or  looks  at 
it.  The  sacred  number  seven  is  respected  by 
us,  not  because  of  anything  that  happened 
on  any  seventh  day,  but  because  Babylonian 
priests  insisted  upon  its  mystic  power;  the 
sacred  number  thirteen,  on  the  contrary, 
merely  curses.  The  altar  of  any  god  in  any 
sacrificial  cult  has  always  the  same  terrible 
power  of  taboo.  It  kills  or  injures  the  impure 
who  approach.  In  fact,  the  whole  religion  of 
sacrifice  (sacrificium,  note  the  word)  is  due 
to  this  potency  in  things  sacred.  It  is  the  art 
of  directing  the  potency  for  our  benefit  instead 
of  for  our  bane.  But  whether  it  hurts  or  helps, 
the  sacred  is  the  embodiment  of  the  stimulus 
of  shock ;  and  the  things  in  which  it  resides  are 
those  which  have  not  been  made  over  into  the 
commonplace,  on  the  one  hand,  or  so  fully  ex- 
plained away  by  the  reason,  on  the  other,  as  to 
fail  of  further  recognition  even  by  the  emotions. 


THE  NEW  REGIME  137 

The  sacred,  then,  lies  in  essence  outside 
habit  and  the  categories  of  logic.  But  in  its 
operation  it  becomes  fundamental  in  both.^ 
For,  although  in  origin  they  are  the  unhabit- 
ual  and  unappropriated  things  which-  become 
sacred,  —  the  things  of  danger  and  of  crisis, 
—  these  same  things  once  sacred  are  always 
sacred.  Emphasizing  the  thrill  tends  to  exalt 
it  and  to  perpetuate  it.  Any  attempt  upon  it  is 
sacrilege ;  even  its  examination  is  sacrilege  to 
a  second  degree,  to  be  dealt  with  by  society 
as  both  sin  and  crime.  For  where  there  is  fail- 
ure to  convict  and  punish  openly,  we  suffer 
in  our  consciences,  which  are  the  intimate 
reflection  of  what  others  think  of  us.  This 
very  analysis  of  mine  is  sure  to  meet  some- 
where with  just  such  condemnation,  as  a  viola- 
tion of  sacred  truth  or  mystery.  In  more  prim- 
itive society  it  would  bring  exile  or  death.  So 
the  sacred  not  only  intrudes  within  the  realm 
of  habit,  but  resides  inviolable  in  its  very 
heart,  safeguarded  by  all  the  forces  of  society. 
It  fastens  itself  upon  us  with  the  power  of  its 
original  stimulus,  strengthened  by  the  un- 
questioned repetition  of  all  the  ages. 

This  is  the  secret  of  the  conservatism  of 
religion.  As  the  embodiment  of  this  sense  of 


138    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

the  sacred,  it  is  the  most  conservative  thing 
in  the  world.  It  perpetuates  adjustments  be- 
gun before  the  dawn  of  thought,  thrills  that 
show  themselves  in  the  behavior  of  the  lower 
animals.  It  is  not  by  chance  that  the  Catholic 
Church  has  as  its  motto  "  Semper  idem."  That 
has  been  the  motto  of  a  larger  catholicity  than 
any  theologian  has  ever  dreamed  of  —  a  catho- 
licity that  includes  every  sacred  thing  and 
every  emotional  response  in  the  history  of 
humanity  —  and  beyond.  For  behind  it  lies 
the  great  law  of  Habit,  —  that  hidden  despot 
of  the  whole  realm  of  life.  Habit  is  just  uncon- 
scious repetition ;  and  repetition  is  the  largest 
law  of  Nature  itself. 

Only  by  an  effort  of  the  conscious  will,  or 
by  the  impulsion  of  some  new,  compelling 
stimulus,  can  we  change  our  conduct,  and  do 
something  new.  Our  lives  fit  into  Nature's 
repetition,  with  its  recurring  days  and  sea- 
sons ;  our  nerves  accept  equally  the  silence  of 
the  woods  or  the  rhythmic  din  of  the  city 
streets,  so  long  as  they  continue  either  silent 
or  filled  with  noise.  But  let  a  single  crow  call 
in  the  fields,  or  the  street  suddenly  hush  its 
traffic  in  mid-career,  and  the  mind  suddenly 
becomes  aware  of  silence  in  the  first  case,  and 


THE  NEW  REGIME  139 

sound  in  the  second.  So  long  as  the  perfect 
succession  endured,  the  mind  went  on,  like 
Nature,  receiving  stimuli  and  letting  them  go, 
as  we  say,  in  at  one  ear  and  out  at  the  other. 

This  role  of  habit  is  so  tremendous  that  its 
very  universality  makes  it  hard  to  see.  It  ex- 
tends through  the  animal  creation  as  definitely 
as  through  the  field  of  human  society.  In- 
deed, it  is  more  a  social  than  an  individual 
thing.  Society  sets  our  habits  for  us,  and 
engraves  the  tablets  of  the  law  in  what  we 
call  our  consciences.  In  this  way  it  finds  a 
substitute  for  what  to  it  is  a  defect  in  our 
biological  make-up,  —  the  inability  to  inherit 
acquired  characteristics.  And  its  substitute 
is,  to  say  the  least,  a  fair  equivalent  for  the 
missing  inheritance.  If  birth  does  not  supply 
us  with  habits,  it  supplies  us  with  tendencies 
for  their  acceptance.  And  the  habits  come 
before  consciousness.  A  baby  will  acquire  the 
habit  of  going  to  sleep  only  when  one  walks 
with  it,  before  it  has  learned  to  localize  its 
bottle,  —  that  first  lesson  in  spatial  concepts. 

Geologists  tell  how,  in  the  distant  past,  the 
glaciers  wore  down  our  hills  and  grooved  our 
valleys,  and  then,  in  the  long  ages  since,  the 
streams  have  kept  wearing  ever  deeper  those 


140    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

same  grooves.  Palaeontologists  now  tell  us 
that  man  was  here  through  the  whole  vast 
process,  and  they  find  his  bones  of  the  pre- 
historic past  along  those  same  river  drifts, 
where  his  cities  cluster  now.  But  it  remains 
/for  the  psychologist  who  examines  the  geo- 
•  logy  of  behavior,  not  merely  of  man  but  of 
:  life  as  a  whole,  and  not  simply  of  individuals 
but  of  society  as  well,  to  find  that  in  that 
inner  world  of  sensations,  whose  frail  con- 
tours burst  in  less  cosmic  revolutions,  the 
grooves  of  feeling  have  been  wearing  down 
in  the  same  inevitable  and  eternal  process, 
until  we  of  to-day,  with  all  our  boast  of  intel- 
lectual independence,  with  a  glorious  history 
of  emancipation  to  our  credit,  are  still  little 
more  than  helpless  river-beds  for  the  currents 
of  habitual  feeling  and  conduct.!  Religion, 
with  its  semper  idem,  sanctifies  its  own 
stimuli. 

Here  is  the  setting  for  the  part  played  by 
belief,  not  simply  in  religion  but  in  every  de- 
partment of  thought.  Belief  is  just  the  con- 
tinuance in  consciousness  of  this  tendency  of 
nerves  and  senses  to  accept  and  repeat  their 
stimuli.  It  is  only  in  this  light  that  the  full 
significance  of  its  tremendous  role  in  our  lives 


THE  NEW  REGIME  141 

can  be  appreciated  —  for  so  much  of  it  is  still 
beyond  the  rirn  of  consciousness.  It  is  the 
nature  of  our  minds  to  believe,  just  as  it  is  of 
our  senses  to  feel.  Doubt  is  an  acquisition ; 
belief  is  born  with  us.  The  only  things  we 
doubt  —  naturally  —  are  those  which  run 
counter  to  a  previous  body  of  accepted  be- 
liefs. The  will  to  believe  is  as  deep  as  life 
itself. 

It  may  be  objected  that  I  am  using  the 
word  "  belief  "  too  widely,  in  stretching  it  to 
reach  outside  intellect  into  the  field  of  emo- 
tion. Belief  commonly  means  a  conscious 
mental  act;  accepting  as  true  something 
known  and  tested.  When  one  says  "I  be- 
lieve/' one  stands  up  mentally  before  the 
world  to  state  the  result  of  an  inner  examina- 
tion. When  the  parish  priests  taught  the 
crude  minds  of  our  peasant  forefathers  the 
Creed,  and  they  responded  in  its  simple  but 
moving  recital,  it  would  seem  as  if  theology 
were  giving  mankind  its  first  formal  lessons 
in  introspection,  and  that  the  result  was  a 
mental  clarification  on  the  deepest  mystery  in 
life.  But  we  are  in  danger  of  confusing  the 
belief  with  its  confession  on  the  one  hand 
and  its  content  on  the  other.  Belief  in  this 


142    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

sense  is  neither  the  mystery  nor  the  Creed, 
but  that  active  principle  which  makes  creeds 
out  of  mysteries.  This  at  once  sets  it  forth 
as  wider  than  intellect.  The  belief  which  we 
are  dealing  with  is  no  more  a  purely  rational 
process  than  the  "will"  to  believe  is  conscious 
and  rational.  The  phrase  "the  will  to  be- 
lieve "  is,  as  we  have  been  shown  so  clearly, 
a  sort  of  biological  expression,  indicating  the 
life  impulse  projected  in  a  certain  direction. 
It.  is  that  tendency  to  accept  from  the  start 
at  face  value  the  impressions  which  the  senses 
register,  simply  because  that  is  their  busi- 
ness. 

But  this  statement  of  the  all-embracing 
character  of  the  process  of  belief  furnishes 
no  justification  why  the  reason  should  accept 
its  conclusions.  Indeed,  it  is  the  duty  as  it  is 
the  nature  of  reason  to  turn  back  upon  this 
process  and  challenge  it  at  every  step.  Reason 
is  the  critic  which  saves  belief  from  credulity 
and  purifies  philosophy  from  myth.  There  is 
a  fashion  nowadays  to  decry  its  action.  Rea- 
son, according  to  one  anthropologist,  is  only 
justification  for  our  prejudices.  James  and 
Bergson  and  the  pragmatists  have  beset  it 
around  and  about.  But  though  hard-pressed 


THE  NEW  REGIME  143 

by  its  own  offspring,  —  for  presumably  this 
new  philosophy  is  reasonable,  —  it  yet  remains 
the  valid  critic  of  our  lives.  We  should  be  in 
a  bad  way  if  it  were  not,  for  it  is  the  only 
critic  we  have, — and  therefore  the  only  critic 
of  itself.  We  may  not  know  how  far  it,  too, 
like  the  faiths  it  challenges,  is  determined 
from  beyond  consciousness,  by  the  same  in- 
fluences which  render  them  untrustworthy; 
we  may  have  little  more  confidence  in  its  con- 
clusions than  in  the  simple  blunderings  they 
replace.  We  may  even  not  know  just  what  it 
is.  But  we  can  see  its  results  in  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth  and  read  its  justification  in 
the  glory  of  that  rational  control,  which  ex- 
tends out  into  time  and  space,  and  plants 
there  the  empire  of  the  mind,  —  which  ex- 
tends back  into  the  motive  forces  of  life  and 
society  and  turns  them  to  new  and  loftier 
ideals.  I  have  no  doubt  but  that  reason 
will  profit  from  this  very  movement  of  philo- 
sophic anti-rationalism  which  dominates  to- 
day, and,  chastened  by  a  statement  of  its  lim- 
itations, —  which,  like  all  schoolmasters  it  has 
been  slow  to  admit,  —  move  with  a  truer  step 
into  the  heart  of  that  pervading  mystery 
which  is  the  stimulus  of  science  as  of  religion. 


144    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

I  Now,  reason,  as  I  have  said,  is  not  able  to 
accept  the  conclusions  of  belief  unless  it  has 
had  a  chance  to  verify  or  test  their  truth.  It 
is  never  —  when  it  is  itself  —  overawed  by  the 
sense  of  authority.  It  recognizes  no  authority 
but  its  own.  Indeed,  to  the  trained  mind,  which 
has  learned  to  look  back  upon  itself  and  has 
had  a  glimpse  of  the  power  of  emotion  and  its 
vagaries  in  our  lives,  there  is  nothing  more 
suspect  than  the  conclusions  of  a  universal 
belief.  The  catholic  appeal  to  what  all  men 
have  believed,  everywhere,  at  all  times,  is  just 
what  the  psychologist  is  least  sure  of.  For  the 
conclusions  contained  in  such  ancient  creeds 
embody  that  untrained,  unrational  apprecia- 
tion of  mystery  which  thrilled  into  primeval 
brains  and  passed  on  into  the  realm  of  con- 
sciousness as  both  thrill  and  thought  —  the 
manitou  which,  in  the  mind  of  the  Algonkin, 
plays  over  both  dream-beaver  and  its  revela- 
tion. This  was  the  origin  of  myth.  Myth  did 
not  begin  as  an  explanation  of  mystery  but  as 
its  statement,  when  the  shocks  of  the  emo- 
tions were  translated  over  into  the  language 
of  thought.  Thought  phrased  them  as  a  story ; 
but  so  unclarified  was  the  mind  in  which  that 
story  lay,  that  subject  and  object,  cause  and 


THE  NEW  REGIME  145 

effect,  were  all  confused.  One  can  see  exam- 
ples of  this  in  any  myth.  Aurora  is  both  the 
dawn  and  the  dawn  angel,  just  as  manitou  is 
the  power  in  the  mystery  and  the  mystery 
itself.  There  is  no  logic  of  cause  and  effect 
because  the  emotions  apprehend  by  the  effect 
alone  and  do  not  know  the  cause  except  as 
apart  from  the  result.  The  Indians  of  New 
Guinea  say  that  more  people  are  drowned  in 
the  rapids  of  their  rivers  than  in  the  more 
tranquil  stretches,  because  the  spell  of  those 
already  drowned  makes  the  rapids  drown  others. 
There  is  a  truth  in  this  for  the  emotions,  —  as 
in  the  case  of  the  snake.  But  reason  does  not, 
for  all  that,  accept  the  existence  of  the  demons 
of  the  rapids,  as  myth  goes  on  to  interpret  the 
situation. 

Myth  is  the  embodiment,  in  the  form  of  a 
story,  of  the  experiences  of  shock,  and  comes 
frankly  from  the  realm  of  the  un-understood. 
It  conveys  the  impression  of  the  mystery  it 
describes.  One  recites  it  with  lower  breath,  by 
midnight  fires,  in  sacred  places.  It  carries  con- 
viction by  arousing  a  repetition  of  the  original 
emotions  which  called  it  into  being.  But  in 
the  eyes  of  reason  it  is  no  satisfactory  record 
of  reality.  Reason  says  it  must  be  given  up. 


146     RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

Its  untrustworthy  character  is  now  stamped  in 
the  very  word  itself.  Yet  religion  has  been 
describing  its  mysteries  in  terms  of  myth 
throughout  all  history.  The  myths  themselves 
become  sacred,  from  the  very  weight  which  so- 
ciety puts  upon  them.  Creeds  tend  to  become 
sacramental,  carrying  with  them,  like  the  sub- 
stance of  baptism  or  eucharist,  the  miracu- 
lous power  of  the  mystery  which  they  em- 
body in  thought. 

Now  we  are  in  danger  again  of  confusing 
the  content  of  a  belief  with  the  function  of 
believing.  It  is  absolutely  fundamental  to  re- 
main clear  upon  this  point,  and,  in  order  to 
emphasize  it  by  well-known  things,  I  shall 
venture  for  a  moment  into  Christian  theology. 
Christianity  has  emphasized  faith  as  perhaps  no 
other  religion.  Modern  scholarship  now  claims 
that  this  emphasis  was  due  rather  to  the  in- 
sistent pressure  of  Greek  than  to  purely  Jew- 
ish elements.  But  "justification  by  faith" 
did  not  mean,  to  Paul  or  to  Luther,  the  sub- 
scription to  a  few  set  conclusions.  It  was  and 
is  much  more  than  the  acceptance  of  a  myth 
—  and  much  of  what  both  believed  was  mythi- 
cal. It  is  that  emotional  attitude  toward  mys- 
tery which  accepts  and  treasures  it,  and  inter- 


THE  NEW  REGIME  147 

prets  in  terms  of  that  acceptance./  It  is,  as  it 
were,  the  ecstasy  of  reverence,  the  joy  in  fear. 
This  is  something  older  than  Greek  or  Jew, 
older  than  all  theologies.  The  faith  which 
justifies  is  as  wide  as  the  experience  of  all 
mankind  and  reaches  back  to  the  dawn  of 
thought.  Its  exact  content,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  no  such  universal  sanction.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  never  the  same  in  any  two  believers. 
The  substance  of  the  faith  of  Paul  not  only 
was  different  from  that  of  Luther,  but  it  varies 
with  every  brain  which  mirrors  in  fleeting  im- 
pression the  faint,  blurred  facts  of  history. 

We  cannot  follow  this  line  where  it  would 
lead  us.  But  from  the  point  already  reached, 
we  can  now  see  the  religious  revolution  of  to- 
day in  a  new  and  clearer  light,  —  and  I  ven- 
ture to  add,  in  a  more  tremendous  and  im- 
pressive form.  For  now  we  can  realize  what 
is  the  significance  of  that  change  in  attitude 
upon  which  it  depends.  Science  does  not  jus- 
tify by  faith,  but  by  works.  It  is  the  living 
denial  of  that  age-long  acceptance  which  we 
accord  the  mystery  —  as  such.  It  renounces 
authority,  cuts  athwart  custom,  violates  the 
sacred,  rejects  the  myths.  It  adjusts  itself  to 
the  process  of  change  whose  creative  impulse 


148    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

it  itself  supplies.  Not  semper  idem,  but  sem- 
per alterum  is  the  keynote  of  science.  Each 
discovery  of  something  new  involves  the  dis- 
carding of  something  old.  Above  all,  it  pro- 
gresses by  doubting  rather  than  by  believing. 
The  first  thing  the  historian  must  learn  is  to 
doubt  his  sources,  refuse  to  -believe  his  au- 
thorities. It  was  by  sucE~tlenial  in  the  cities 
of  Ionian  Greece  that  history,  as  distinguished 
from  myth,  came  into  existence,  when  the 
forerunners  of  Herodotus  grew  skeptical  about 
the  stories  of  Homer.  And  it  was  the  absence 
of  this  skepticism  which  has  made  the  mediaeval 
chronicler  an  object  of  contempt.  Science  re- 
cognizes no  "  authorities  "  ;  it  tests  everything. 
It  has  no  creeds,  but  only  working  hypotheses ; 
even  its  laws  of  gravitation  are  being  recast 
at  the  present  moment.  No  sacredness  inheres 
in  its  ideas ;  the  older  they  are  the  less  we 
rely  upon  them,  for  the  mechanism  of  obser- 
vation and  experiment  is  perfecting  as  we  go, 
and  the  earlier  scientists  could  often  only 
guess  where  we  can  measure  and  weigh.  So 
here,  too,  the  attitude  is  the  reverse  of  that 
seen  in  the  treasuring  of  religious  faith. 
Moreover,  philosophy  has  caught  the  tone  of 
science,  and  carries  the  doubt  beyond  where 


THE  NEW  REGIME  149 

the  scientist  generally  would  carry  it.  For 
when  science  ventures  to  place  in  its  own  dis- 
coveries the  confidence  which  it  refuses  to  the 
unscientific  world,  metaphysics  and  psychology 
combine  to  show  that  the  so-called  "  facts" 
of  chemistry  or  biology  are  myths  like  those 
they  replace.  Everything  is  relative ;  absolutes 
disappear.  ,-The  very  philosophy  which  has 
given  consolation  to  mystics  by  its  attack 
upon  reason,  carries  us  logically  to  the  heart 
of  pessimism.  Knowledge  is  never  sure, — 
truth  is  never  quite  apprehended.  In  short, 
the  mystery  is  too  much  for  us. 

The  religious  revolution  now  stands  before 
us  <in  all  its  red  Jacobinism.  It  is  part  of  a 
vast  movement  which  invades  every  field  of 
thought.  Viewed  from  the  position  we  have 
now  reached  in  our  survey,  it  appears  as  the 
transference  of  our  ideals  from  a  world  of 
faith  to  one  of  doubt,  from  myth  to  rational- 
ism, acceptance  to  denial.  Are  we,  then,  head- 
ing for  that  "  Everlasting  No  "  which  Carlyle 
so  graphically  described  three  quarters  of  a 
century  ago  ?  Is  there  nothing  left  us  but  the 
fleeting  vision  of  phenomena,  whose  reality 
forever  lies  beyond  our  ken?  So  at  least  it 


150    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

seems  to  many  an  observer,  and  especially  to 
those  who  watch  the  movement  from  the  high 
places  of  philosophy.  For  instance,  in  a  book 
published  recently,  Professor  Santayana's 
"  Winds  of  Doctrine/'  we  are  told  that  the 
intellectual  temper  of  our  age  is  one  in  which 
"  our  whole  life  and  mind  is  saturated  with 
the  slow,  upward  infiltration  of  a  new  spirit 
—  that  of  an  emancipated,  atheistic,  interna- 
tional democracy."  "  How,"  he  asks,  "  should 
there  be  any  great  heroes,  saints,  artists,  phi- 
losophers, or  legislators  in  an  age  when  no- 
body trusts  himself  or  feels  any  confidence  in 
reason,  in  an  age  when  the  word  dogmatic  is 
a  term  of  reproach?" 

But  now  is  all  this  pessimism  justified? 
The  red  flag  of  socialism  seems  to  the  shud- 
dering bourgeois  the  symbol  of  the  blood  of 
its  victims ;  to  the  workers  enrolled  under  it, 
it  symbolizes  the  common  life-blood  of  a  uni- 
versal brotherhood  of  man.  The  grizzly  omen 
of  fear  and  death  means  really  an  ideal  of 
life  and  hope.  So  it  is  possible  that  the  revo^ 
lution  which  we  are  analyzing  may  offer  for 
the  onward  march  some  such  inspiration  out 
of  the  very  heart  of  its  destructive  forces. 

One  thing  is  sure,  that  inspiration  must  be 


THE  NEW  REGIME  151 

found  there  or  not  at  all.  It  must  be  armed  with 
the  strength  of  the  conqueror,  not  with  the 
mere  protest  of  defeat.  There  is  no  salvation 
in  that  sickly  obscurantism  which  attempts  to 
evade  realities  by  confusing  itself  about  them. 
Safety  lies  only  in  clarity  and  the  struggle  for 
the  light.  No  subliminal  nor  fringe  of  con- 
sciousness can  rank  in  the  intellectual  life  be- 
side the  burning  focal  centre  where  the  rays 
of  knowledge  converge.  The  hope  must  lie  in 
following  reason,  not  in  thwarting  it.  To  turn 
back  from  it  is  not  mysticism ;  it  is  superstition. 
No ;  we  must  be  prepared  to  see  the  higher  crit- 
icism destroy  the  historicity  of  the  most  sacred 
texts  of  the  Bible,  psychology  analyze  the 
phenomena  of  conversion  on  the  basis  of  ado- 
lescent passion,  anthropology  explain  the  gen- 
esis of  the  very  idea  of  God.  And  where  we 
can  understand,  it  is  a  moral  crime  to  cherish 
the  un-understood. 

But  now  let  us  review  our  material.  First 
of  all,  mystery  does  stimulate ;  it  quickens  the 
whole  psychic  life,  and  as  that  includes,  at  our 
end  of  the  process,  both  religion  and  science, 
mystery  stimulates  both  of  these.  That  stimu- 
lus may  be  treasured  in  the  realm  of  the  emo- 


152    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

tions,  in  what  we  call  reverence  and  awe;  and  as 
such  a  treasure  it  passes  on  into  the  world  of 
clarified  impressions  as  the  sacred  —  still  ex- 
erting its  spell.  Myth  is  its  embodiment,  though 
later  regarded  as  its  explanation.  But  the  stim- 
ulus may  also  bring  out  curiosity,  which  also 
goes  back  to  the  realm  of  instinct.  Curiosity 
began  as  an  integral  part  of  the  primitive 
psychic  reaction,  —  that  part  of  the  reaction 
in  which  man  ventured  to  assert  himself  over 
against  the  mystery.  It  is  an  expression  of  the 
vital  impulse,  that  same  vital  impulse,  which, 
if  I  am  correct  in  my  analysis,  also  underlies 
the  transformation  of  fear  into  reverence.  But 
here  the  impulse  pushes  back  to  meet  the  mys- 
tery. It  is  combative,  impatient  of  its  stimulus, 
irritated  by  it  instead  of  charmed.  It  is  more 
intent  upon  other  things,  most  likely  upon 
attaining  the  solution  of  its  problem,  than  the 
beauty  of  the  operation.  It  tends  to  be  prac- 
tical rather  than  poetical.  Stressing  this  side, 
it  naturally  tends  to  lose  sight  of  the  mys- 
tery and  to  generate  confidence  in  itself.  So  it 
develops  a  habit  of  doubt  as  over  against  that 
submission  and  acceptance  which  resides  in 
the  emotional  apprehension. 

These  two  elements  of  our  psychic  life,  the 


THE  NEW  REGIME  153 

one  stressing  the  recoil  and  acceptance,  the 
other  based  upon  the  assertion  of  will,  have 
gone  diverging  paths  through  the  history  of 
our  intellectual  evolution.  Their  contradictory 
tendencies  have  been  emphasized  and  they 
have  been  pulled  apart.  Until  to-day  their 
faces  have  been  set  in  opposite  directions  — 
witness  the  feeling  of  antagonism,  and  the  lit- 
erature upon  the  warfare  between  religion  and 
science.  Science  has  been  so  disgusted  with 
the  bogies  which  the  emotions  have  created 
out  of  mysterious  things  that  it  has  little 
patience  with  that  timorous  attitude  which 
awaits  the  thrill.  It  is  impatient  not  less  be- 
cause of  the  unreliable  character  of  such  im- 
pressions than  because  of  the  attitude  itself 
which  seems  unworthy  the  dignity  of  man. 
Religion,  on  the  other  hand,  has  gone  on 
treasuring  its  thrills,  stressing  the  sacred,  cre- 
ating myths,  explaining  its  mystery  in  terms  of 
the  un-understood,  doing  everything,  in  fact, 
which  science  disapproves  of. 
sf  Now  if  this  is  to  continue,  the  outlook  is 
clear.  For  science  is  moving  the  mystery  far- 
ther and  farther  from  the  sphere  of  daily  life 
and  action,  destroying  taboos,  and  building  up 
a  world  of  rational  experience ;  and  if  religion 


154    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

is  nothing  but  the  submission  to  mystery,  it  is 
doomed.  If  it  is  the  trembling  register  of  fear 
transmuted  maybe  into  softened  keys  but  al- 
ways fear  —  pulsating  through  awe  and  rev- 
erence, with  the  suggestion  of  a  power  beyond 
control  —  if  this  is  all  there  is  in  life  that  is 
religious,  it  is  not  enough  to  satisfy  the  rational 
intelligence.  Yet  that  is  what  a  theology  based 
upon  the  irrational  background  of  life  de- 
mands. In  short,  there  must  be  religion  of  the 
head  as  well  as  of  the  heart,  if  the  head  is 
getting  control  of  the  situation  —  or  else  reli- 
gion will  share  the  fate  of  the  emotions  in 
which  it  has  been  enthroned.  It  will  be  dis- 
barred from  directing  the  life  of  intelligence, 
both  individual  and  social. 

It  is  no  answer  to  decry  the  head,  to  insist 
upon  what  the  rationalist  knows  only  too  well, 
that  we  are  embryos  in  reason  and  millenniums 
old  in  emotions,  and  that  most  of  our  lives  are 
passed  under  their  authority.  For  already  the 
emancipation  of  the  intelligence  has  proceeded 
far  enough  for  us  to  see  its  tremendous  possi- 
bilities. Science  has  already  justified  itself  by 
works.  It  has  made  our  civilization.  It  has 
even  found  a  method  by  which  Nature  itself 
reveals  its  secrets :  experiment  replaces  expe- 


THE  NEW  REGIME  155 

rience,  and  the  forces  of  the  world  measure 
themselves  before  our  eyes. 

I  do  not  think  the  significance  of  this  has 
yet  been  sufficiently  realized.  The  new  know- 
ledge can  be  expressed  largely  in  terms  of 
control.  We  are  made  masters  of  atoms  and 
moving  tides.  We  play  upon  the  forces  of 
Nature  as  the  musician  upon  his  piano.  Time 
and  space  yield  to  a  more  powerful  witchery 
than  any  mythic  dream.  Eeality  shapes  itself 
along  our  path ;  and  we  move  with  growing 
confidence  and  power.  Nor  does  this  achieve- 
ment of  control  have  to  do  only  with  the 
material  world.  It  has  justified  itself  in  the 
realm  of  conduct  even  more.  Morals  for  us 
are  no  longer  a  set  of  taboos  recording  the 
irrational  reactions  of  past  millenniums ;  they 
are  being  taken  over  by  the  intelligence  of 
mankind,  —  and  for  the  first  time  we  are 
cleaning  our  moral  slums  efficiently  because 
we  know  how.j  Charity,  as  I  said  before,  is  not 
now  a  mystical  virtue  for  the  giver,  but  a 
business  to  be  looked  into  from  the  standpoint 
of  society^  In  morals  as  a  whole  we  are  grow- 
ing franker  and  seeing  straighter,  and  all  be- 
cause we  have  learnt  to  displace  the  heart,  in 
such  matters,  by  the  head.  It  may  as  well  be 


156    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

said  once  for  all,  that/  young  as  the  intelli- 
gence is,  it  is  already  sufficiently  in  control  of 
the  situation  in  social  affairs  as  in  material, 
that  any  effort  to  thwart  it  is  going  to  react 
disastrously  upon  whoever  and  whatever  tries 
to  do  so. 

But  there  is  a  larger  view  than  this  antag- 
onism ;  one  which  carries  along  into  our 
modern  world  the  general  synthesis  which 
we  called  religion  in  the  primitive,  —  the 
whole  operation  in  which  the  mystery  was 
apprehended,  both  receptivity  and  curiosity. 
Throughout  untold  ages  the  highest  values  of 
life  have  lain  in  the  emotions  which  perpetu- 
ate the  receptivity,  —  reverence  and  awe^urj- 
osity  has  been  secondary  and  neglected,  Now 
it^claims  the  lead.  Hence  the  religious  revolu- 
tion. In  the  new  regime  whose  glorious  crea- 
tions are  already  before  our  eyes,  reason  claims 
our  allegiance.  Will  it  discard  all  but  itself  ? 
Or  will  it  recognize  the  legitimacy  of  emotion 
as  a  register  of  stimuli  even  while  mistaking 
their  origin?  Is  there  no  possibility  of  awe 
and  reverence  except  in  a  realm  of  delusion  ? 

There  are  two  things  which  make  eternally 
awe  and  reverence  possible.  And  they  are  the 


THE  NEW  REGIME  157 

two  which  set  us  going  along  the  whole  path  of 
this  evolution,  from  primitives  to  ourselves  — 
life,  on  the  one  hand,  audmatter,  on  the  other 
— and  both  are  mysteries.  Life  with  its  "  push," 
its  will,  its  vital  impulse,  of  which  science 
expresses  only  part ;  matter  into  which  plays 
this  questioning  and  emotional  force.  If  both 
should  prove  to  be  but  one  —  if  life  is  a 
mechanism  —  it  would  not  change  the  situa- 
tion ;  there  would  still  be  two  parts  of  a  mys- 
tery in  play  and  counter-play.  These  are  final 
mysteries,  and  there  is  no  fulcrum  in  all  the 
universe  to  move  them  from  our  path,  how- 
ever we  strain  on  the  lever. 

Mankind  for  untold  ages  has  appropriated 
these  mysteries  and  their  attendant  phenomena 
mainly  by  emotion  —  and  the  result  has  been 
stagnation  and  defeat.  Here  and  there  in  the 
long  past  a  little  advance  was  made,  reason 
developing  to  grapple  with  mysteries  as  prob- 
lems. Elimination  of  errors  brought  clarifi- 
cation;  magic  yielded  to  worship,  spell  to 
prayer,  orthodoxies  became  heresies  and  here- 
sies superstitions.  Religious  evolution  showed 
in  successive  stages  a  parallel,  faint  but  trace- 
able, to  the  progress  of  the  secular  life.  This  is 
what  we  saw  in  our  first  lecture,  when  we  dis- 


158    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

covered  that  the  religious  revolution  of  to-day 
is  but  the  last,  swift  phase  of  an  age-long 
movement  correlative  with  the  rise  of  civiliza- 
tion. From  the  standpoint  of  their  own  time 
even  the  prophets  have  been  lessening,  rather 
than  enlarging,  the  social  scope  of  religion,  as 
they  purified  it.  Purifying  meant,  generally, 
getting  rid  of  elements  no  longer  consistent 
but  none  the  less  effective  in  an  unenlight- 
ened world.  When  the  prophets  of  Jahve  pro- 
claimed that  a  pure  heart  was  more  acceptable 
to  him  than  burnt  offerings,  they  struck  a 
blow  at  a  mode  of  worship  as  universal  as  re- 
ligion itself.  It  would  be  like  declaring  to-day 
that  the  churches  should  be  closed.  When 
Jesus  cut  in  so  ruthlessly  upon  the  Pharisaical 
observance  of  the  "  law,"  he  violated  taboos 
at  every  turn.  From  the  standpoint  of  the 
Pharisee  there  was  a  loss  in  religion  and  an 
intrusion  of  the  secular  upon  it. .  So  one  might 
run  over  the  history  of  Christianity,  and  watch 
its  superstitions  wear  away  in  the  light  of  a 
steadily  dawning  intelligence.  The  process  is 
even  clearer  in  the  pagan  world.  One  should  re- 
call the  charge  of  "  atheism  "  directed  against 
the  keenest  thinkers  of  antiquity  and  the 
greatest  of  its  moral  reformers.  But  what  was 


THE  NEW  REGIME  159 

personal  and  incidental  in  the  past,  depending 
largely  upon  the  genius  and  inspiration  of 
seers  and  leaders,  has  now  become  a  social 
movement,  as  wide  as  science.  The  sphere  of 
emotional  play  in  the  realm  of  mystery  is  now 
limited  by  the  dominant  reason  —  is  or  tends 
to  be.  And  the  result  is  a  knowledge  which 
carries  with  it  control  —  and  the  religious 
revolution. 

It  is  time  to  close,  and  yet  we  have  just 
begun  the  consideration  of  that  element  of 
our  problem  which  is  of  most  vital  interest  to 
us.  The  past,  which  held  its  meaning,  and  the 
outer  world  which  reveals  it,  have  kept  us  too 
long  from  ourselves.  We  must  leave  for  an- 
other time  and  circumstance  the  application 
of  our  investigations  in  the  world  of  to-day. 
But  we  have  already  seen  that  this  revolu- 
tionary era  in  religion  as  in  science  is  no  tem- 
porary phase  of  the  history  of  thought.  The 
ground  which  has  been  won  will  not  yield  to 
the  forces  of  superstition  under  any  disguise 
of  orthodoxy  ;  it  is  secure  for  all  future  time, 
because  the  life  of  civilization  has  established 
itself  upon  them.  The  gains  of  Hellenic 
genius  were  almost  entirely  in  the  realm  of 


160    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

thought  and  art,  in  the  realm  of  poetry  and 
not  of  the  practical  life.  Those  of  Judea 
were  if  anything  more  unpractical  still.  In 
fact,  practicality  has  borne  a  stigma  through 
all  the  pre-scientific  age.  It  is  now  the  strength 
of  our  intellectual  emancipation.  For  the  com- 
forts of  the  body  as  well  as  of  the  mind  are 
to  be  found  in  the  new  regime,  and  no  blind 
barbarism  is  able  to  withstand  this  double 
appeal.  Science  controls  as  well  as  studies 
disease,  prevents  the  dangers  its  viligance 
discloses,  and  stands  like  a  warder  along  the 
frontiers  of  experience.  It  is  increasing  the 
store  of  wealth  and  now  calling  for  a  higher 
justice  in  its  distribution.  Armed  with  such 
powers,  it  is  invincible ;  the  pre-scientific  era 
can  no  more  return  than  the  pre-historic.  We 
left  our  cave  shelters  of  the  frozen  past  many 
thousand  years  ago,  built  our  cities  and  spread 
out  our  nations;  but  until  yesterday  —  and 
even  now  —  the  mind  has  kept  reverting  to 
those  hidden  channels  where  it  groped  in  blind- 
ness and  marked, its  spells  of  magic  on  the  sub- 
terranean walls.  It  does  so  still  whenever  it  has 
a  chance,  but  the  chances  are  lessening.  It  is 
too  much  to  say  that  the  reign  of  reason  is  at 
hand,  for  most  of  us  are  still  primitive  through 


THE  NEW  REGIME  161 

and  through ;  but  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  irrational  is  henceforth  doomed  to 
yield  up  the  command  of  the  motive  forces 
of  conscious  conduct. 

The  achievements  of  the  intellect  have  been 
greater  than  most  people  suspect.  Its  scope  is 
not  to  be  measured  by  any  single  discoveries 
in  science  or  philosophy,  but  in  the  general 
movement  toward  rational  control.  Evolution 
brings  emancipation;  it  offers  life  the  poise 
that  secures  judgment  upon  its  actions  and 
dreams,  instead  of  the  blind,  quick  satiation 
of  emotion.  The  reason  is  working  out  a  vaster 
science  than  we  dream  of  —  a  scientia  scien- 
liarum  which  is  not  metaphysics  or  theology, 
but  simply  the  great  science  of  living.  This 
is  not  a  new  creation,  for  it  is  as  old  as 
thought,  but  it  has  only  now  won  its  way  to 
the  position  of  control.  It  does  not  ignore 
those  old  crude  impressions  which  lie  behind 
its  intellectual  creations.  It  recognizes  the 
emotions  which  are  stung  into  being  along 
the  quivering  nerves,  just  as  definitely  as  the 
thoughts  which  follow.  But  it  knows  where 
to  place  such  phenomena  and  how  to  interpret 
them. 

Finally,  nothing  that  is  fundamental  in  our 


162    RELIGIOUS  REVOLUTION  OF  TO-DAY 

experience  is  lost.  Indeed,  since  we  now  see 
the  mystery  in  life  itself  which  we  used  to 
find  in  death,  as  long  as  life  endures,  the  trem- 
ulous note  of  reverence  will  sound  across  the 
still,  clear  spaces  of  the  mind.  But  the  tone 
from  that  eternal  thrill  will  be  moulded,  under 
the  control  of  reason,  into  other  forms  than 
that  fantastic,  barbaric  and  discordant  theme 
which  has  held,  and  still  so  largely  holds,  the 
drama  of  our  ancient  myths  —  and  our  the- 
ologies. 


THE    END 


(Cfcc 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .   S    .   A 


14  DAY  USE 

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